From the Sector

SDC’s annual competition engages with hundreds of students, universities and designers globally, helping the entrants develop their understanding of color and the challenges around sustainability in the textile supply chain. The theme for 2018 is ‘color communication’.
With a global textile supply chain, being able to communicate a given color through the supply chain efficiently and effectively is vital. Ultimately this provides the designer with the knowledge that their product is commercially suitable from the initial concept stages through to final product.
Archroma will support the competition with its Color Atlas color management system, which will be key to both the competition theme and the accompanying educational package.
Using these colors also provides the best opportunity to minimize the environmental impact during the dyeing/printing process by ensuring that the dyes conform to many of the environmental standards that exist and are applied using best practice.
“We at Archroma are very proud to be the official sponsor of the SDC International Design Competition. The participants will be able to experience first-hand how the Color Atlas can support their creativity. For Archroma, this is a great opportunity to further drive innovation and sustainability in the textile supply chain“, commented Brad McClanahan, Global Head of Service Businesses at Archroma.

With digitalization transforming the way consumers shop, today’s fashion companies are playing a neverending game of catch-up, as they compete for the attention of a generation of connected, fickle-minded millennials who want it all: personalization, sustainability, quality and speed, accessible at all times, across multiple channels, and at the lowest price. Industry 4.0 is not only revolutionizing how manufacturers operate, but also how brands and retailers need to function, if they want to be fast and agile enough to meet the needs of this demanding new consumer. The stakes are high and how effectively companies harness technology to put the consumer at the heart of their process will be the deciding factor in who comes out ahead and who gets left behind.

Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0 has undergone a drastic reboot to give fashion and apparel companies the speed and agility they need to tackle the challenges of Industry 4.0 head on. Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0, with the widest functional scope on the market, acts as an intelligent nerve center to the digital supply chain, from planning through design to production. This ensures a consistent flow of error-free data between processes, technologies and people. The system connects CAD, industry-standard software such as Adobe Illustrator, company IT systems (such as ERP) and external suppliers, so that actors across the supply chain can work on, save and share information on the platform, ensuring data integrity.
The solution also draws on best practices, fashion-business intelligence and real-world scenarios to automate administrative and repetitive tasks, with templates, standard libraries and shortcuts that allows more time for value-added activities. The final result is a fast, connected digital supply chain that helps fashion companies jump on trends quickly and deliver products that fulfill their customer’s expectations.

“Lenzing stands for a responsible approach to nature. For this reason, we use 100% of the natural resource wood, from the core to the bark – as pulp, bioenergy and biochemicals such as acetic acid”, explains Lenzing CEO Stefan Doboczky. “That is why we are very pleased that our pioneering role with respect to the issue of sustainability has gained worldwide recognition”, Mr. Doboczky adds.

The Lenzing Group produces dissolving pulp at its sites in Lenzing, Austria and Paskov, Czech Republic. All the valuable raw materials are extracted from the wood within the framework of a cascading use. Acetic acid is derived from beech wood in the pulp production process, is recovered in several process steps and processed into high quality, food-grade acetic acid, for example for the food industry. Furfural is a product utilized as a solvent in the refining of lubrication oil, to name one example. Magnesium lignosulfonate is found in animal food or fertilizers.