With 23,000 customers, 1350 employees and 5 international call centres worldwide, Lectra has seen strong growth in 2010, boosted mostly by the automotive industry with profits doubling, as revenues touch 190 million euro. The company a major player in software solutions for the past 38 years has presence across many industries of which fashion accounts for 55%. The next big industry for Lectra is the automotive industry, which accounts for 26% of business, followed by furniture at 8% while other industries account for around 11% of the business.
Considered among the 50 most innovative companies in Europe, Lectra has penetrated the Asian market and China is its biggest buyer today. “One of the strengths of Lectra is the capacity to help our customers to use the best practices of the industry which are related to technology to optimize investments,” says Daniel Harari, CEO, Lectra. At Texprocess the company introduced three new concepts: “Vector®” with new smart services, Versalis® Fashion – new leather cutting solution for footwear and accessories; and Modaris® V7R1 – best seller CAD software providing advance function for making 2D function and also 2D to 3D solution.
Vector® fabric cutting machine with smart services is fitted with sensors to analyze the fabrics with help of software and send this information to the ‘centre’ where experts can decide how the machine will proceed. This machine has been developed to address various difficulties faced in cutting process. “Today the cost of manufacturing as well as the cost of fabric is rising, so it is very important to optimize fabric and the new version of Vector machine is designed to efficiently handle this problem,” says Harari.
On the other hand, Versalis® Fashion is their latest leather cutting solution, which leads to the highest level of quality. Since there is ‘0’ gapping in cutting space between the fabrics, it can achieve high degree of cutting precision (0.2 mm). This has been tested with more than 51 fabrics. With three heads that works simultaneously and six different tools per head, the Versalis® Fashion can achieve 12,000 cut pieces per shift. Besides cutting, the solution also has facility of scanning, digitizing and nesting. “This machine can give savings of 3,00,000 euro per year,” says Harari.
The innovation that caught everyone’ s attention was the Modaris® V7R1, which is not only a patt ern making solution, but has the power of 3D proto typing to visualize the 3D look of a 2D pattern. It makes the product development fast, using 2D and 3D designing in parallel. It also reduces pattern construction error and cycle time for samples, increasing productivity by 50%. The software is enhanced with colour, 3D mannequin and fabric libraries. Patterns made with the solution are compatible and easily shareable with Lectra’s Modaris 3D Fit and Diamino Fashion solutions.
Growing fast, Lectra is a company on the move and to assist in this growth the company has setup a 3,00,000 sq. feet unit in Bordeaux spread across 28 acres of woodland, which consists of international call centre, R&D, conference centre, manufacturing facilities, finance and administration. “For growth we are focusing on five fundamentals – knowledge of industry best practices, comprehensive offer to optimize process and investment, customer satisfaction, innovation and clear strategy with solid fundamentals and ethic… after all, customer satisfaction is at the centre of our day-to-day concern,” concludes,” Harari.
