To stay successfully in business, textile and clothing companies nowadays need to be able to issue new fashion collections in a short time. However, the product development represents a bottleneck, since several physical samples have to be developed to judge the design. This is costly and time consuming. Virtual prototyping can significantly reduce the number of physical samples which are necessary in the development process. However, its diffusion and efficient use in the industry is still low due to the inherent complexity of garment simulation. Thus, the main goal of the FFD project was to develop a new business and production workflow to represent the whole development process virtually leading to an innovative Virtual prototyping solution for the textile and clothing companies. The FFD business model offered drastic improvements in product development efficiency (reduced number of physical samples from 20% to 100%, time-to-market reduced by several weeks, intensified collaboration between fabric and garment producers), services at low-cost (open, vendor independent and scalable platform), while opening new market opportunities to vendors of CAD and PDM/PLM systems.
