The Co-design Process in Mass Customization of Complete Garment Knitted Fashion Products

Abstract

Complete garment knitting technology is a method of producing products, generally fashion garments, readymade directly in the knitting machine without operations such as cutting and sewing. This makes it possible to manufacture a fashion garment with fewer processes then with conventional methods. Mass customisation is a customer co-design process of products and that tries to meets the needs of an individual customer's demand. The customer can order a garment with a customised style, colour, size, and other personal preferences. Co-design is a collaborative process between the customer, the retailer, and the manufacturer by which a product is customised to fulfil the customer's requirements. This paper is based on the results of a doctoral thesis. The process of codesign and manufacture of a customised complete fashion product is examined. Research was conducted by a retail concept simulation and three case studies. A cross-case analysis was done to analyse the data. The main findings are a description of two kinds of retail concepts for knitted customized fashion products. A knitted garment can be customized, produced, and delivered to the customer in three to five hours. In the Co-design process two kinds of interactions are feasible between the company and the customer: manual or digital co-design. A manual process has advantages such as: high service level for customers, no requirement of advanced technical equipment. However, manual co-design is labour intensive, a shop assistant can only serve one client at a time. It is also only pplicable to brick-and-mortar stores and not transferable to the Internet. Digital codesign, on the other hand, encourages customers to do the customisation on their own, without the aid of sales personnel and little risk of queues. Moreover, this technique is ideal for the Internet. Disadvantages to date have included limited design options and problem of taking body measurements.

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