Centric Software, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, is proud to announce its partnership with Higg, the sustainability insights platform. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Centric PLM™, the leading PLM solution for the apparel industry, is now integrated with Higg to provide product designers environmental impact data on material choices.
Designers and product developers will be able to send materials from Centric PLM to Higg with the click of a button and receive impact scores for each material choice, such as its carbon footprint and water utilization, using the most robust and trusted sustainability dataset available. A product score is automatically generated once the Bill of Materials (BOM) is complete. Higg also offers information on product end of use options and impacts. Brands, retailers and manufacturers of all sizes can access Higg data through Centric PLM, regardless of where they are on their sustainability journey.
“Increased transparency and visibility enable teams to make decisions taking environmental impact into consideration while also ensuring target product margins are met, using reliable data that is accessible on a single platform,” says Ron Watson, VP of Product at Centric Software. “When also coupled with other technologies such as 3D material libraries, avatars and prototypes as well as optimized processes such as efficient supplier collaboration, not only can a product’s environmental impact be lessened but so can overall cost of goods sold. Being sustainable doesn’t mean killing growth or profitability.”
”Through Centric’s integration with Higg, designers gain access to material-level environmental impacts, which enables them to make critical decisions to develop more sustainable products,” says Higg CEO Jason Kibbey. “Conscious consumers are demanding both high-quality and environmentally-responsible products, and with Higg data, businesses can deliver on these expectations.”
“Like all of our innovations, Centric PLM’s integration with Higg was developed hand-in-hand with our customers,” says Saurabh Deshpande, Director, Product Management at Centric Software. “We pay close attention to the needs and challenges of our customers, and sustainability is a core issue for many of them right now. We have developed a close relationship with Higg, working together to provide brands, retailers and manufacturers with accurate sustainability data.”
Many Centric customers are already using PLM to drive and monitor sustainability initiatives, and are looking forward to the increased efficiency and accuracy the integration will bring.
“Centric PLM is a very important part of our digital transformation journey. Its interconnection with Higg will help Epic to analyze and understand the environmental impact of our products and help us make lower-impact, more sustainable product offerings to our customers,” says Ranjan Mahtani, Executive Chairman of Epic Group.,
“The importance of having standardized systems for data collection across the industry is crucial if we want to make the right decisions and have the right impact,” says Kathleen Buckingham, Director, Sustainability at tentree & veritree. “Without having standardized approaches, methodologies will not be comparable. With an agreed standardized system, companies can set benchmarks and be able to learn from their peers from a standardized methodology. Since Higg delivers the industry standard for apparel, it can be trusted to reflect the latest science and specific needs. It will benefit from the input of a network of users and grow to suit the needs of the industry as the needs evolve. Having access to Higg built into Centric PLM will streamline the data collection and analysis process and reduce confusion regarding alternative systems.”
“It is important for us to be able to offer our customers full transparency regarding our products, where they are produced and what materials they contain. Centric Software’s solution makes it possible to continuously save all data at product level, so that we can then easily retrieve all data related to materials, which facilitates our sustainability reporting,” says Åsa Andersson, Sustainability Manager at Peak Performance.
“We are proud to partner with Higg, who lead the way in guiding consumer goods businesses through the maze of sustainable sourcing,” says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “Centric PLM’s integration with Higg will empower our customers to make better choices that benefit their environmental impact, brand reputation and bottom line.”
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