One of Denmarks biggest retailers invests with Geac to help it compete with major global fashion brands

Dansk Supermarked Gruppen, Denmarks fifth-largest company and one of the countrys biggest clothing retailers, has just gone live on a new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system from Geac (TSX: GAC, NASDAQ: GEAC) to help its leading supermarkets (Bilka and ftex) and its 36 high street stores (Tj & Sko) compete in the hugely competitive fashion industry. The PLM system now provides multiple users at Dansk Supermarked Gruppen including product managers, buyers and designers with a Web-enabled design collaboration tool to create and issue comprehensive, accurate garment design information to all of its global design and manufacturing partners in order to help bring new products to market quickly.

The new PLM system, supplied by RunTime, Geacs specialist division dedicated to the apparel and footwear industry, is designed to improve multiple-party design collaboration in order to shorten lead times for new product introductions. Dansk Supermarked Gruppen works with multiple drops, whereby stores receive weekly deliveries of garments, as opposed to just a few collections throughout the year. The company now seeks to minimize the time from design and production to presentation in the store.

The Geac PLM system is set to instil greater control over the entire design processes, providing global partners with access to one source of design data, a capability known as product data management (PDM). The system also incorporates proactive process workflow capabilities (Quest Workflow Engine) ensuring all parties are automatically updated with any changes to garment designs.

Rapid design creation is now possible as users have ready access to more than 3,000 garment parts in the systems electronic library (StyleTime). Users can then employ simple drag and drop technology and reuse existing designs for fast garment design.

Jrgen Klwer, Deputy Director for Bilka, said:
Weve only been using the system for just a few months, but we expect a great reduction in lead time when introducing new products and getting them right the first time. This is critically important because we arent trying to compete with the leading fashion brands on designs, but rather on providing high availability of competitive products in stores. Therefore we need to be fantastically responsive to market needs. The new Geac system is expected to help our whole supply chain. This includes standardising our buying process and increasing professionalism throughout the chain. We can now create and e-mail high quality, accurate specifications on garments, including wash labels and measurements schemes, via PDF files to our suppliers. This will help increase quality and will get garments exactly right the first time.