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The Virtual World Product Lifecycle Management Enterprise System will allow designs to use 3D tools in the virtual world Second Life and an OpenSim virtual world to work on every stage of designing items except for the actual manufacturing.
Users will be able to access the system through Second Life and OpenSim, receive training on how to use the in-world tools and take their products from concept to prototype by developing virtual product samples.
The project is planned to go live next year, piloted by up to 20 international design houses, and will eventually be offered as a design service or enterprise installation.
Using virtual worlds is one way the Institute is trying to make the fashion industry rethink many of its practices that result in waste or harmful effects on the environment. By designing fashion items in a virtual world, designers eliminate all the physical prototyping stages and associated waste. Working in a virtual world also gives parties interested in the products better access to all stages of the design process.
The product design system was co-developed by IBM and the Fashion Research Institute, both of which have prior experience with virtual worlds. IBM runs the IBM Business Center in Second Life, where its holds conferences, tours and meetings, and hosts a virtual green data center, showing technologies that can keep energy and environmental impacts low. The Fashion Research Institute runs a five-island area in Second Life called Shengri-La where fashion designers, artists and researchers work, and an OpenSim virtual complex.
The emperor has no clothes
By designing fashion items in a virtual world, designers eliminate all the physical prototyping stages and associated waste. Working in a virtual world also gives parties interested in the products better access to all stages of the design process.
Most of the waste in apparel is not in prototyping. This is the wrong prescriptive. If one routinely requires more than three iterations, I'd suggest they need another pattern maker. Speaking as a pattern maker in the garment industry for 25+ years that is.
For the sake of argument, even if prototyping were the waste culprit it is purported to be here, this "solution" is redundant. Computer aided drafting products like Optitex have 3D modules already. Furthermore, these are more less wasteful and more efficient as one can seamless convert the image into a 2D blueprint. So if anything, existing CAD programs are less wasteful if only in terms of reducing prototyping time. This project is redundant because altho users of the design process can access the image, it still has not been actualized in real life. You still have to convert the virtual image into 2D to create it -and the subsequent iterations to match said images.
Lastly -and forgive my annoyance- the vast majority of wastefulness in the industry is related to poorly conceived priorities, planning, strategy and execution on the part of a company. The problem remaining unresolved here is that it has become de rigueur for companies to produce designs in quantity before there is demonstrated demand -in other words, orders. It didn't used to be this way; it's not coincidental that margins didn't used be so tight either. Rather, the strategy to combat wastefulness is -dare I say- to regress to an older model that originated when resources were far less available. This model is called Lean Manufacturing. If you only cut products to order rather than pie in the sky projections (often delusional judging from the results), nothing ends up in the landfill. Not until after the consumer has made his use of the product anyway.
Fashion-Incubator
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