How product development can be improved in fast fashion industry: An Italian case

Abstract

The fast fashion industry is characterized by a complex supply chain configuration, lots of players and an important critical success factor: time to market. In order to ensure the compliance to the fashion collection timing, the entire Product Development process has to be optimized through the analysis of both the flows of material and information. The authors have personally been involved in an in-depth case study, aiming to investigate the earlier phase of a PLM implementation and trying to merge business processes with proper enabling information technologies. The present study strives for analyzing the underexplored topic of improving Product Development in the fashion industry as well as identifying best practices for business process re-engineering in the industrial environment.