CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

9 July 2008

Implementation Investments

Delcam Crispin Software Keeps Footwear Company One Step Ahead

To be a successful subcontractor in the global footwear industry means keeping one step ahead of the competition. With its Delcam Crispin software, Italian company Diamant DMT does just that. The software has helped it to win contracts from world leading manufacturers, such as Nike, Crocs and Bikkembergs.

Started in 1978 by Signor Zecchetto, Diamant, DMT has gradually but constantly grown to achieve a worldwide reputation in the manufacture of cycling shoes. Today its designs are the choice of world champions like Lance Armstrong, Alessandro Petacchi, Laurent Jalabert and Mario Cipollini. In its products, design and high-tech materials are skillfully blended to give the ultimate performance from shoes that weigh only a few hundred grams.

Initially an exclusive Nike subcontractor in Europe for high-quality football boots, Diamant DMT has grown from 20 employees making 100 pairs per year in 1980, to the current 300 employees making 300,000 pairs in Italy, plus a further 1,000 employee in Bosnia making six million pairs a year of injection moulded shoes for Crocs.

Diamant DMT has gradually diversified its production into cycling wear, moving from the local cycling teams to international teams such as Panaria. Recently, the company even started to produce racing-bike chassis, working successfully for Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Eddy Merckx.

Delcam Crispin has been used by Diamant DMT since the mid 1990s. Production Manager Signor Philippe Zecchetto, the son of the founder and the first Crispin operator in the company, remembers the time when he needed two days work to develop a pattern, and how that same pattern was achieved in just four hours following the acquisition of the first license of the software.

The current two Crispin licenses are used to make not only the upper design, but also the upper graphic work and the sole patterns. Every stage is achieved with absolute precision and with the maximum freedom to exchange data with suppliers in real time.

The most significant of the many benefits brought in by Crispin is the powerful and flexible editing. No pattern is correct the first time, nor the second or often the third, especially when the design plays such a big part in the success of the finished product. A complete database of all the patterns has been kept since day one and being able to import sections from previous patterns is of great help in speeding the process. Last, but not least, full control of the grading, the special scaling method used in the footwear industry, is important to ensure an accurate fit in the finished shoe.

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