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The next time you watch a professional sports team in action, check out the cheerleaders. Chances are good that their uniforms came from The Line Up, an Optitex customer exclusively focused on custom dance consumes and creative performance apparel.
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Optitex PDS Helps The Line Up Find High-Performance Success | Case Study
software that fits
The next time you watch a professional sports team in action, check out the
cheerleaders. Chances are good that their uniforms came from The Line Up, an
Optitex customer exclusively focused on custom dance consumes and creative
performance apparel. Among other markets, The Line Up custom designs
uniforms and costumes for NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, Soccer, Cricket, Lacrosse, Arena
and Semi-Pro sports franchises across the world.
The software that helps create these high-performance designs is Optitex Pattern Design Software ( PDS).The Line Up’s owner and CEO, Deb Erickson, started the company in her home in 1989 aftersome of the trainers in her health club, who coached local sports teams, noticed her custom-made fitness wear and asked if she would create some for them. She did and today her business employs over 30 people, and has customers with names like the Houston Texans, Washington Wizards and Minnesota Vikings.
Before switching to Optitex PDS, Deb was using another provider’s pattern design software. She saw three key benefits in moving to Optitex: 1) the ability to link garment patterns to customer accounts; 2) fewer mistakes in patterns; and 3) the ability to operate the design software from any workstation.
“The biggest benefit since switching to Optitex,” Deb says, “is managing account information better and faster. It’s the ability to save information in a Windows platform so that we can merge pattern design data with our existing account management system without any additional time or effort.”
No More Missing PatternsWith her previous system, Deb says, simply finding a pattern was a much more manual process - time consuming and error prone. “We’d pull the wrong patterns. We couldn’t keep track of which order went with which pattern, or which prototype. Did it go with proto 1 or proto 2? We couldn’t tell.”
The previous pattern design system saved pattern data to a closed database that was separate from the Windows files, including Excel spreadsheets, used to store other customer information. With Optitex, however, pattern designs are stored in Windows files just like her other data. “Because Optitex is in a Windows platform,” Deb says, “the way we organize our accounts now has worked out perfectly. All we do is just save all that customer’s data in that customer’s folder. So all that electronic data is in one location. And we know where to find it and we know that a particular pattern was used in fact for a specific timeframe for specific account.”So what can be done now with a few keystrokes in Optitex, used to take considerable effort and guesswork, she says. “The problem we had with our old pattern design
About OptitexOptitex is the leading provider of 2D and 3D CAD/CAM, and Virtual Prototyping software solutions for the fashion, automotive, aeronautics, industrial fabrics and upholstery industries. Optitex presents these industries with easy to implement, open and innovative software systems for automating and optimizing their production manufacturing operations and virtual prototyping capabilities. These proficiencies enable Optitex’s customers to significantly lower costs, quicken their time to market, and become more competitive. Visit us at www.optitex.com
system was that we could not find pattern data quickly or relate it back to the customer account. We couldn’t keep the pattern with all the other supporting data like contact information, product specs, and so on. It was also very difficult to name versions of patterns or pattern parts and find them again.”
Catastrophes Avoided
Deb also cites another factor that made finding patterns difficult “When I was saving an item I could only use so many characters to label it. So, maybe I had 20. That’s just 20 letters or numbers I could use to label that pattern! It got very complicated, as in, ‘How do I define what this is in 20 characters?’ It became nearly impossible when you have multiple patterns for each customer. For example, we might have a customer who has maybe five different garments, but for each garment we might make three patterns before we get to the final production pattern. And when we’re making that many patterns all the time it’s not unusual for each person in product development to make five to 10 patterns a day. And then you have multiple pieces shared all over the place; you can see how easy it would be to do something quite catastrophic.”One of those catastrophes might be to over-write a previous version of a pattern before saving it. “Pattern pieces are shared between models.” Deb says. “So then I went and changed a pattern piece and didn’t rename it, it would then destroy my base pattern piece. That was very dangerous because you could make a mistake in one pattern piece that was shared by 200 other patterns. With Optitex, you don’t have to remember to save the old version before making a new one; Optitex does it for you.”
Easier Collaboration
Deb also likes the fact that Optitex lets her share a license among multiple workstations. “Before, what would happen is that we’d have one license per computer. So, if I wanted to go in and fix a pattern or check someone else’s work I’d have to get up from my desk and walk over to a workstation that was specifically licensed to run that patterning software. With Optitex, we can share a license among numerous computers. So, if I have a patternmaker say to me, ‘Can you check this pattern?’ all she has to do is quite Optitex on her workstation and I can open it
on mine. That makes it easier for us to stay focused on pattern making, not running around from workstation to workstation.”All this efficiency lets The Line Up meet its commitments to tailor its classic designs in four to eight weeks and deliver custom designs in 12 to 18 weeks. That’s not just high-performance apparel. That’s high-performance pattern design, with Optitex PDS.
www.thelineup.net
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