CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

23 June 2009

Product News

Zweave Debuts Zdesign 3.0 to Reduce the Cost of Consumer Goods Manufacturing and Design Processes

Zweave announced the release of Zdesign 3.0, a product lifecycle management (PLM) platform that enables apparel, retail and related consumer product development teams to more cost effectively manage the way products are designed and produced as they strive to deliver higher quality goods in less time.

New features in Zdesign 3.0 include: Web 2.0 collaboration tools, streamlined workflow, intuitive search, content management and web publishing, and overall improved security and flexibility.

“Current approaches to PLM span basic technologies such as emailing and faxing to more sophisticated collaborative platforms rooted in manufacturing and supply chain management. These approaches can lead to time delays, costly production errors and rigid workflows that don’t accommodate industry-specific needs,” said Laura McCann-Ramsey, president and chief executive officer, Zweave. “Zdesign 3.0 bridges the gap between these two approaches and was developed specifically for the apparel and retail industries.”

Zdesign 3.0 features a collaborative Ajax-based Web 2.0 interface to more easily create, source and manufacture consumer goods while maintaining greater control over the entire process. With more than 500 pre-built forms that accelerate the product development process, Zdesign 3.0’s capabilities make it easier to move and share the information across internal and external organizations. The document management capabilities are built into each of the templates making them more like online folders that can support attachments such as PDFs, images and spreadsheets. Users can comment, request and share information as well as assign tasks through these folders to employees across the organization, brand or division, for example. This sharing of collective knowledge is further extended through Zdesign 3.0’s ability to mirror wiki and instant messaging tools.

Enabling collaboration while supporting the need to work independently, Zdesign 3.0 also provides end users with the ability to customize their views of information through RSS feeds based on business needs.

The localized workflow capabilities allow different teams and divisions to establish the processes that best reflect their product design and development requirements. Going beyond traditional workflow tools, Zdesign 3.0 supports flexible notifications and group approvals to avoid potential bottlenecks in the development process. Further, with support for iCal and vCal, tasks can be instantly added to calendars to ensure the processes within workflows and project management schedules are executed on time.

The intuitive search features allow users to easily find information whether it’s through saved searches or contained within a PDF. Also, since Zdesign supports semantic searches and offer human-readable URLs, users simply search and find information more quickly based on their experiences.

Zdesign’s document management and web publishing capabilities reduce the time consuming efforts associated with filling out forms and templates while providing greater visibility into the design process. Users can easily transform their design documents into presentations and instantly publish their work to the Web or at a specified time without requiring additional programming or software. The technology also scales images so that users don’t have to waste unnecessary time resizing designs in different formats. Integration with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator further streamlines the way that files and thumbnails are saved and shared. With support for more than five languages, Zdesign documents can be easily printed or saved as PDFs or Microsoft Word files without the Web-based headers and footers attached while more than 70 industry-specific reports can be published in HTML, PDF or Excel formats.

Enhanced security features provide greater control, authentication and tiered access to information with the benefit of single sign-on. Additionally, the system can provide alerts if and when others are actively using a document and can also recover accidentally deleted files.

Zweaves’s Zdesign 3.0 runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Unix platforms. Zdesign 3.0 is available immediately via subscription or on premise. Pricing is contingent upon licensing and configuration with monthly subscription costs starting at $25 per user.

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