Clothing mass customization, that is, in the production process, the production of clothing is still using mass production; and for the customer, you can freely choose the size, style, etc., in some parts of the clothing, so as to achieve personalization and high degree of fit.
Apparel mass customization can play both the high efficiency of mass production and the advantages of customized product diversification; it can provide closer personalized demand and cut inventory costs; it can bring lucrative profits for enterprises and higher value-added products and services for consumers.
1 Apparel mass customization of the development of the status quo
In recent years, many apparel enterprises in foreign developed countries have been through the implementation of mass customization and gained a huge competitive advantage. In Europe and the United States and other countries, the surveyor in the brand store will measure the customer's body size, to understand the customer's different personalized needs for clothing color, style, accessories, etc., and then the customer-related data will be transmitted to the enterprise's database, in order to match the appropriate style, production in the shortest possible time, and finally delivered to the customer's hands. In this way, the mass customization mode not only maintains the advantages of large scale, high speed, high efficiency and low cost, but also realizes the "one-to-one" personalized service to customers.
Currently, China's clothing mass customization in addition to some special clothing areas, such as group professional clothing, high fashion and other areas of development, on the whole is still in the exploratory stage. To implement large-scale customization, the need for product development, processing and management of clothing enterprises to carry out larger changes in the mode, which not only requires technical support, but also to change the concept.
2 Process analysis of the design phase of apparel mass customization
The design phase of apparel mass customization is usually divided into the standardized design process and customized design process. Between the two processes there exists a Customer Order Decoupling Point (Customer Order Decoupling Point), also known as the customization point. The customer's demand information is cut into the production process at the customization point. In the customization point before the production of clothing is no personalized characteristics of clothing, that is, the direct use of standardized, modular design, according to the forecast of stocking production; in the customization point after the customized production methods, based on the customer's different needs for differentiated design of clothing, production, to meet the customer's personalized needs, thereby improving the rapid response capability.
The apparel supply chain generally consists of the following production process links: raw material supply → dyeing → cutting → sewing → ironing. Customization of clothing mainly includes: fabric texture customization, color and pattern customization, style customization, size customization, decorative customization. The location of the customization point is directly related to the production method in the supply chain (Figure 1).
Customization point 1: If the customer selects fabrics from the fabric library provided by the supplier, and only selects the clothing style customization, the customer customization point is in the downstream clothing cutting stage, with smaller customization scope and outstanding scale effect, it is relatively easy to carry out mass customization, and the price is also competitive. This customization method is mainly suitable for low-end and casual clothing and other products.
Customization point 2: If the customer not only chooses the style customization, but also has special requirements for the color and pattern of the fabric, then the customer customization point to the upstream printing and dyeing to move, customization of the scope of the expansion of the production time period, the production time cycle lengthened, the scale effect is reduced, the price competitiveness is weakened. The customization method is mainly suitable for medium and high-end clothing products.
Customization point 3: If the customer has further requirements for the texture and structure of the fabric, the customer customization point is moved to the starting point of the upstream supply chain, the efficiency of mass customization, the cost advantage will be greatly reduced, at this time, the competitiveness of the mass customization depends mainly on the batch size of the product as well as the differentiation, value-added and other customization factors. The customization method is mainly suitable for advanced customized clothing.
Obviously, if the customization point moves upstream in the supply chain, the modular production stage will be shortened, and the scope of customized production will become larger; and the more the customization point moves downstream, the more obvious the scale effect will be. Therefore, the position of the customization point in the whole supply chain can be chosen according to the industry characteristics, product characteristics and specific requirements of customers.
3 Implementation of the design phase of apparel mass customization
Apparel design technology is one of the key technologies for apparel mass customization. In order to realize the clothing mass customization, it is necessary to adopt a reasonable method of clothing development and design.
3.1 Operation of the design process
3.1.1 Collection of customer demand information
On the one hand, the enterprise establishes an exhaustive database of human body dimensions through the collection of human body sample data, sets up clothing specifications applicable to large-scale customization, and establishes a library of standard samples for each type of clothing, which provides information for the modular design of the new clothing; on the other hand, the consumers can be On the other hand, consumers can carry out three-dimensional measurements through the measuring points set up by the enterprises in various places, identify the body size through the system software, and match them in the clothing standard sample library, and finally get the suitable clothing samples for the final clothing customization.
3.1.2 Clothing style development and design
Mass customization-oriented clothing development and design can be further divided into the "development of clothing for large-volume customization" and "clothing design for mass customization". The "development" stage is mainly to establish a database for mass customization of style models, sample models and process models. The "design" stage is to use the style model, sample model and process model established in the development process to quickly design customized styles, customized samples and customized processes, thus shortening the design cycle and delivery time of customized products. When the customer orders, through the enterprise's designers and customers *** with the design, complete the customer on the product needs of the "professional" description, a customized production of clothing orders are generated. Figure 2 for the clothing mass customization design stage of the order generation process.
3.1.3 Key technologies in the design stage -- modular design
Mass customization is based on modular design and modular manufacturing, and its basic idea is to analyze the customer's needs and the potential demand for the basis of the different parts of the garment, broken down into relatively independent design modules. Clothing modular design is the basis of clothing configuration design and variant design, designers can select from the module library for the required pieces of clothing or parts and other modules for combination, configuration, and according to customer demand for rapid variant design, and ultimately design a series of clothing products.
Taking women's shirts as an example, to illustrate the specific method of modularized clothing design. In the modular library, customers can follow the process of operation, choose their own personalized custom clothing styles.
First, in the basic style library, customers can choose the basic shape of the body they need. Then, in the parts library, customers can modify the basic styles and reorganize them into customized styles. On the basis of the basic style, customers can change the collar shape, sleeve shape, decorative effect, etc. to form the final customized style. As shown in Fig. 3, it is the effect diagram of the reorganized style. Finally, in the size module, customers can choose the appropriate size to complete the whole customization process. In addition, in the fabric module, the customer can also choose the color of the shirt and the pattern of the fabric. As shown in Figure 4, the customized information submitted by the customer can be used in the background to generate the corresponding style structure drawings through the CAD system.
In order to maximize the use of molding module, reduce the new design to achieve apparel mass customization, often based on similarity theory, make full use of apparel product configuration model for apparel design.
3.2 Transmission of design information
Apparel mass customization can realize the rapid conversion and flow of information from apparel style design to process design. Through the use of product data management (PDM) technology, apparel computer-aided design (CAD), processing information can be quickly converted to apparel computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) system. Then apparel companies use the digital system of processing equipment (such as the United States Gerber's MTM system), according to the resulting design data, accurate and efficient single-quantity single cut clothing, which makes agile manufacturing, flexible production possible.
In addition, the enterprise resource planning system (ERP) is also constantly designing the completed process information, such as process route information, material quota information, working hours quota information, material schedule data and other types of process data, summary statistics and centralized management, so that the production planning, scheduling departments to guide production in a timely manner.