BT Nagesh, Country Manager, Lectra India Shares Insights to Solutions the Company Offers
PS: How is LECTRA offering unique solutions for denim manufacturing?
Nagesh: In a globalised and competitive marketplace, denim brands need to design and develop a wider range of body shapes and sizes. With Lectra, denim companies can ensure they maintain consistent sizing and improve fit while speeding up the development process. Combined technologies such as 3D and product lifecycle management can speed up and improve the development process by connecting design and technical teams, so they can work together to create fashionable products that look good, fit well and stay within budget. Development teams can use 3D technology to adjust measurements virtually until the fit is just right, or adapt designs to suit different body shapes and sizes, reducing the lengthy prototyping process. Cutting down on the number of physical samples required means less fabric waste and fewer fittings, shipments and tests, which helps in faster, cost-efficient development process with reduced environmental impact.
PS: As you offer cutting solutions, how do they help in hassle free denim manufacturing? What is the output, key strengths and advantages over others in the market? How it does help in increasing efficiency and productivity?
Nagesh: Technology in production takes things one step further by maximising efficiency in the cutting room. Smart production planning solutions that communicate with each other help brands get the most out of fabric or decide on the best way to mobilise available resources. Lectra’s heavy-duty cutters, designed with denim in mind, can handle thick stacks of heavyweight or stretchy material with speed and precision. Our solutions give up to 30%-40% better productivity than the prevailing competitive solutions. In addition to this, our consulting on lean production process minimises errors and shortens time to market and the end result is a better-quality product, bigger profit margins with a more streamlined and effective supply chain from beginning to end.
PS: What are the major challenges in denim manufacturing today?
Nagesh: Skinny jeans, boyfriend jeans, yoga jeans, designer jeans and many more categories are now a part of denim. Denim has come a long way from its humble beginnings as the five pocket uniform of the working class. Jeans are now a wardrobe staple but the growing popularity of ‘athleisure’ clothing has been eating away at this category’s market share. Sportswear as daywear has become fashionable and lifestyle moving more towards fitness has created a new generation of consumers that demand comfort and performance in their clothing as much as they do style. In response, denim brands are racing to tempt fickle consumers with high-performance, body-shaping fabrics, new cuts and trendy washes.
PS: What is the ROI of the machine that you offer and do they have a minimum capacity requirement?
Nagesh: RoI is specific to each company and the technology areas they chose to invest for denims. Customers who invest in an integrated design, product development, fabric planning, ordering and cutting have faster RoI. With Lectra’s Industry 4.0, LECTRA Solutions enable customers to save up to five per cent in fabric at the planning and ordering stage; however, using OPTIPLAN, LECTRA’s denim cutting solutions have productivity 50% – 60% higher than generic cutting solutions. Our Quick Nesting and Quick Estimate solutions take the benefit and advantage of cloud technology which can no longer be ignored. With Quick Nest, our customers process automatic markers that enable gain of considerable time in optimising material consumption. Due to cloud solutions, it offers unlimited computation capacity, highly secured data, optimised costs, updates and scalability, unlimited storage, worldwide accessibility and many more.
PS: What is the USP of machines that you offer, please define all the areas?
Nagesh: The biggest USP of our cutting solutions are that they are 4.0 enabled. With more than 150 sensors, our cutting solutions provide real-time visibility of information, be it on equipment, application related software / services, information on cutting process, material, equipment, users, manufacturing order, marker, job status, activity, etc. Denim-specific cutting solutions have productivity (no. of garments / hour / day) higher than 50% – 60% over generic cutting solutions and increased Overall Equipment Efficiency.
