CAD Comes of Age - CAD systems become integral part of corporate operations at apparel companies, Heartland and Springs - Brief Article

Bobbin, May, 2000

Upon arriving at the annual conference of the Computer Integrated Textile Design Association (CITDA) in early March, I anticipated hearing about the latest developments in design technology for textiles and apparel. What I left with was much more: An insight into the critical role CAD technologies are now playing throughout the supply chain -- from merchandising to retail display.

Given this far reach, CAD systems increasingly are becoming an integral part of corporate operations -- for both well-established firms and newer players on the apparel scene. This message was echoed at the Charlotte, NC, conference, which had a theme of "Turn of the Century Technology," in presentations from Heartland Outdoor Brands and Springs Industries.

The two companies offered an interesting comparison: Heartland, a start-up strategically engineered to leverage the latest computer technologies; and Springs, a 113-year-old home fashions icon that has been a part of CAD'S evolution since the 1970s.

Heartland, which was founded by partners Ken Randall and Bernie Burke, is based on a "design to clicks and mortar" strategy aimed both at e-commerce and wholesale customers. As Randall explained to the more than 185 CAD professionals at the conference: "Our vision is to build a leading e-business service company that manages lifestyle brands that are art inspired."

The company, which is a licensee for painter Bob Timberlake and wildlife sculptor Dick Idol in categories including apparel, supports its distribution strategy with a team-based business approach focused on three areas: merchandising and planning; design and development; and fulfillment and distribution. Heartland's business processes can be physically modeled in the shape of a wheel with spokes, said Randall, with each process having "a defined workflow of steps and a chronology for each activity."

CAD is an essential element of this model, which is completely database driven on an Internet/intranet infrastructure that was developed in conjunction with IBM and Icon. "We have technology that follows each step of the process," Randall emphasized. "Because we were working from scratch, we were able to develop or integrate systems so that [information] in the company was either created or captured in digital media."

This high level of integration was almost unimaginable more than a decade ago, a time when I was running an isolated CAD marker making department, working on proprietary hardware and software and performing computer tape backups every few days. So from my perspective, the achievements of companies such as Heartland are nothing short of revolutionary.

But not many companies have the advantage of being able to build a CAD backbone from the ground up. Textile giants such as Springs, for example, have been challenged to incorporate design and product development tools into well-defined business processes, lest they risk technological obsolescence.

Looking back on Springs' journey from CAD infancy to CAD aficionado, Torrence W. Shealy, senior vice president of marketing for the Springmaid division, recalled: "We were an early adopter of CAD concepts. We started in 1976 with a system that was used mostly on the operational side of the business to help us increase flexibility and speed our time to market. [ldots] In 1991, we began our first step in building a true design strategy."

The initiative was very fragmented at first, with systems placed throughout the company in different divisions, in what Shealy described as "claustrophobic" efforts that resulted in few accomplishments. However, the company had "a vision of high potential" for CAD, which evolved into a standard-platform approach focused on bringing product to market more quickly. Springs also consolidated its CAD operations into a centralized business unit that serves its four bed and bath businesses, and as a result of this reorganization, the firm (with sales of $2.2 billion last year) has been able to reduce lead times more than 8 percent over the past five years.

It's interesting to note that in both of these examples -- which represent vastly different corporate scenarios -- there are some common threads. Most notably, companies are now viewing cross-functional, inter-departmental integration as a key success driver behind CAD initiatives. This, in turn, has pushed CAD both upstream and downstream in the production process. At the conference, interesting demonstrations of this crossover -- which hinted at a future filled with dazzling graphics -- included the combination of multimedia, CAD and Web applications for internal and external merchandising.

These exciting developments are moving ahead at warp speed, pointed out IBM's Mark Westerberg, who noted that the CAD market is now being driven by advances in information technology; growth in online communications; and the emergence of "knowledge management" applications, open software and advanced digital libraries.

The tools are out there. It's now up to the industry to develop and refine them -- whether through corporate evolution or divine creation.