An Exploratory Study on Product Lifecycle Management in the Fashion Chain

New Product Development (NPD) in most manufacturing sectors is stressed by an increasing global competition and pressure to improve product quality and innovation, reduce product cost and time-to-market (TTM), and rapidly respond to changing customer needs and shortened product lifecycles. These requirements are increasingly fulfilled by applying the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) approach, a widely accepted concept that generally defines the adoption of a large number of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) solutions for managing product data along the product lifecycle. This contribution shows the results of research concerning the application of PLM within the luxury fashion supply chain, conducted in 2009 in Italy, with the analysis of 20 companies of the leather market. The research shows some of the differences that exist between the luxury industry and other more PLM-oriented sectors (e.g. automotive) in terms of adopted ICT tools, criticalities, problems, and benefits expected and realized.