Sessions
Session 15
Bringing Mass Customization of Apparel to the Next level: EU-Project Symposion
Monday Oct 5 2009
17:15-18:35
The Research Framework Programs of the European Community are a strong enabler of mass customization in Europe. Presently, the EU funds two large scale projects on mass customization and co-creation in the textile industries. In this joint session, both projects present their results and provide an outlook for the future.
The session is highly relevant for companies in the field that want to learn more about the opportunities of collaborative research being done on the European level. And for anyone interested in mass customization of fashion, the session will provide some interesting insight into some recent developments.
SERVIVE: Bringing Mass Customization of Fashion into Mainstream
Presenters:
Evalotte Lindgens and Thorsten Harzer, RWTH: Market Study: The International Market of Custom Apparel
Bas Possen, CustomMax: A Business Framework for MC Fashion
Christian Lott, Unicatum: A pilot of in-store manufacturing of apparel
Servive proposes the enlargement of the assortment of customizable clothing items currently on offer, the enhancement of all co-design aspects (functionality and fun) and the development and testing of a new production model based on decentralized networked SME cells. The Servive network will not only seamlessly link critical Mass-Customisation (MC) enabling services, but more important it will adapt these services to the specific needs of well-defined target customer groups. It will also enable all necessary interactions of customers with value-chain actors in transparent ways, thus enabling and encouraging the active participation of end consumers in the configuration of the customised items. Central to this scenario is the concept of Virtual Customer Advisor (VCA), which, depending on the profile of the customer will recommend the optimum product configuration, based either on style preferences (Style Advisor), functional requirements (e.g. for protective clothing/ sportswear) or body morphology and physical disability or problem figure related issues. On the upstream part of the chain, the Servive net will introduce the innovative organisational concept of the Networked Micro-Factory, directly linked to the concept of User-centered Production Configuration.
Kartsounis, Piller -presentation pdf
OPEN GARMENTS: Consumer-driven Open Manufacturing and Open Innovation of Personalized Garments
Presenters:
Dieter Stellmach, Project Manager, DITF Denkendorf
Michel Byvoet, CEO, Bivolino.com
The overall objective of Open Garments is the Manufacturing Service Provider (MSP) Business Model enabling individual garments. This model will enable a new way of design, production, and sales of consumer designed and configured garments, based on the provision of individualised services and products to customers and partners. This will lead to new product designs, to a much more customer satisfaction, and to an improvement of the stability and competitiveness of SMEs. Applying this to the European Textile and Clothing Industry will be able to create and provide individual garments with a very high degree of customisation in terms of fit, fashion and function at a comparable price in typically 72 hours. The idea is to empower the consumer as designer, producer and retailer for individual garments by taking the creativity and the willingness of consumers by means of web-based virtual communities of individuals, adopting and integrating (mainly) existing digital technologies for design and production of individual garments in a framework of Open Innovation and (a new concept of) Open Manufacturing, and turning this into a new MSP concept for SMEs with an appropriate business model and tools, which coordinates, supports and manages the Open Innovation community and the Open Manufacturing network.