CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
7 April 2008
Implementation Investments
Van de Velde, Specialist In Luxury Lingerie, Chooses Lectra’s New Generation VectorLingerieMX Automatic Cutting System
Lectra announced that Van de Velde, specialist in luxury lingerie, has acquired theVectorLingerieMX to optimize its production.
Established in 1919, Van de Velde designs and manufactures luxurious women’s lingerie under the brand names Marie Jo©, Marie Jo L'Aventure© and PrimaDonna©. In line with this philosophy, core activities such as design, product development, prototyping, fabric cutting, and quality control are performed at the company’s headquarters in Schellebelle, Belgium. Guided by the desire to satisfy their very demanding clientele of around 5 000 people worldwide, the company presents 300 new models and ships more than five million finished articles per year.
With a view to guaranteeing permanent quality products, whilst at the same time increasing productivity, Van de Velde carried out a study of the different options available on the market. One of the biggest challenges faced by the company is to ensure the highest possible cutting quality for all the components that are used to make their products. Lingerie articles contain many components, which are often small and intricately shaped, and the slightest fault in cutting complicates the whole system, and may lead to a serious drop in product quality. Having tested and assessed existing machines, in the end, Van de Velde settled on the Lectra VectorLingerieMX which provided the best offer in terms of quality, efficiency and productivity.
Combining precision cutting with production flexibility, exceptional output and high-volume cutting capacity, Lectra’s VectorLingerieMX is ideal for cutting small, intricately-shaped lingerie pieces. In addition, it also features pilot software that adapts the system to the particularities of the delicate, elastic materials used in lingerie.
With its previous cutters, Van de Velde could only cut up to 30 layers of fabric with five-millimeter buffers between cut pieces. Today, thanks to the VectorLingerieMX their objective to cut 60 plies with buffers of three millimeters has been achieved. Cutting time is 30% faster, and reducing buffer zones from five to three millimeters has reduced fabric consumption by 4%. The end result of using the VectorLingerieMX is an annual saving of €500,000.
“Lectra has made a big contribution to the success we have had in increasing our productivity and profitability in the cutting department,” said Van de Velde Chief Executive Officer, Herman Van de Velde.
In addition to delivering a rapid return on investment, the dedicated client service provided by Lectra for the VectorLingerieMX has yielded numerous other benefits for Van de Velde: the fact that our Dutch-speaking technicians — who speak neither French nor English — can email Lectra’s client services and immediately get answers to questions in their own language is a subtle yet important advantage. Lectra’s fast response time is another.
“The performance of our VectorLingerieMX has convinced Van de Velde to replace the remainder of its existing cutters with three more Lectra cutters: a second VectorLingerieMX and two VectorLingerieFX cutters, so we are especially proud. These are complementary to our VectorLingerieMX offer dealing with high volumes, allowing manufacturers to cut small and medium production runs ‘just-in-time. Originally developed in close collaboration with Van de Velde, the VectorLingerieFX fully meets the stringent quality criteria imposed by the most demanding lingerie manufacturers,” explains Daniel Harari, Chief Executive Officer, Lectra.
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