Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing: A Textile-Apparel Perspective

Today’s textile-apparel industrial complex is characterized by a multitude of conflicting demands: smaller lot sizes, increased product flexibility, higher product quality and decreasing delivery times. The textile/apparel industry must deploy state-of-the-art manufacturing and information management techniques to operate successfully in such a demanding and highly competitive global market. In this context, the role and scope of mechatronics in textile-apparel production systems are discussed with specific examples. The need for techniques and tools such as information engineering, electronic data interchange and knowledge-based systems technology is established and their relevance to the textile-apparel complex is discussed. An overview of major research endeavors including the development of an enterprise architecture, knowledge-based systems and product data standards is presented. Finally, some topics for further research in areas ranging from distributed design and manufacturing to the development of product data exchange standards are proposed.