3D Design - Module 6 - Understanding your Organisation

All right, it's time to get our fix in Module 6. Welcome to Module 6. Here we'll talk about understanding your organization. In understanding your organization, we need to know who's doing what, who can do what, where do your factories and manufacturers play their part in your process, and we're gonna talk about finding your champions. When we take a look at who's doing what, we wanna understand from concept to consumer, how is the baton being passed from person to person, entity to entity. This will help you identify where some of the issues may be and the best places to introduce 3D to your process to get some of those early wins. We want to take a look at who's creating which assets. So you need to know who's creating your illustrations, who's creating your patterns, and, uh, who's creating the specifications for your patterns. All of these things need to work together in a 3D environment especially when the 2D component of your 3D is such an important part. We also wanna take a look at where are the hiccups. A great place to start is to just ask some of the people on your team, hey, what is the frustrating part about getting your job done? If you can reduce some of those frustrations, you'll definitely win your champions over and have people who are ready to lead your 3D implementation to success. You may also wanna look at which section of the process is the most time-consuming. Where are you losing, uh, the most time in your process? Where are you creating extra weeks of iterations? Uh, because these are things that again, would be a great place to introduce 3D to reduce some of those pain points. Think about all of the departments within your organization that could benefit from 3D. This might be design, this might be in fit, this might be in sampling, or even in photography. One of the beautiful things about our industry is no two companies are alike. Everyone has a different configuration to get their job done and done well. Everyone's product is a little bit different. That's why there has been so much room for so many different brands on the market. Everyone has their own way of doing things. Everyone is creating products that customers are drawn to. So we all have different ways of getting that done. You may have a small organization. There are some specialized companies that create products using a very, very small team. There are also companies that have large global teams that are working together pretty much around the clock. So definitely have a great understanding of who is doing what and what your organization looks like, and know when you're speaking with, uh, your solution providers, we need to make sure that you are getting a solution that fits the size of your company today and the size that you intend to be tomorrow. Sometimes when we talk about who is doing what within an organization, it's not always internal. There are many examples in our industry where the pattern process is something that is completely handled in another part of the world. You may have a factory that's doing all of the pattern work for you. If you want to adopt a model that allows your designers to modify designs that have already been created by a pattern team, sometimes that then can require you to work with your factory if that's an option available to you. If you don't have an in-house pattern team, this is why it's really important to understand who is doing what and to what extent as well. Next, take a look at what sort of talent you already have. Very often in our industry, it's built on an idea of having everyone perform the function inside of their own box. So, some organizations may have a director, and then you have designers. The designer will pass things off to a tech designer. The tech designer will pass things off to a patternmaker, and everyone does their own part. But we're not necessarily educated that way. You'll find very few programs around the world that educate people to really occupy one column. And we have people who go into industry and have other skills that they're just not able to use. You have technical designers who have great design skills, and you have designers who are also very interested in pattern making. So when you look at what kind of talent you have in-house, make sure you're understanding not only what people have done traditionally in their roles in your organization, but think about what they wanna do next. Ask them how they want to proceed with their career and what new skills they want to take on. There may also be skills they don't have already that they would very much like to adopt. That's another great sign that these people who have other skills they want to acquire could be your 3D champions. You want to do an audit, and it doesn't have to be as formal as that sounds, but you want to do an audit of the skills you have in-house. Think about what software people can use. Uh, there are a lot of solutions on the market in both the 2D and 3D space. So if you have team members who are already well trained on one product, that may help you get over the training hump if you decide to go with a solution that they're already familiar with, even though that's not what you're using in-house. Also, look at the skills of the people who aren't immediately in the team that you would consider as a part of your 3D revolution. For example, we've mentioned earlier how your first 3D simulation can also function as your first sample. Think about where that work would traditionally be allocated. Usually your designer, uh, and your tech team and your pattern team would hand off that part of the work to a sample maker. You may have a sample maker in-house, or it may be at your factory. But one of the things that you are doing when you now have 3D as a part of your process is you're creating samples at the design or the fit level or the tech level even before it would usually get to a sample maker. So you're reducing the workload of the sample maker. It may be a great idea to have that sample maker come into the room, uh, with a design team and help them because that's a person who already has a solid understanding of how the garments are going together. They know how to interpret the patterns, and they'll also be really great at spotting the differences between 3D and a physical sample that again can give you some of those great wins in reducing samples because of fit issues or sewing issues. When you're looking at what software solutions your team members are already experience with using. Don't just think about the solutions within the apparel CAD space. You may have some team members who are already great with Adobe products or other 3D modeling products. Outside of apparel, you still have programs like Rhino and Blender, and that understanding of working in a 3D environment can be very helpful for your 3D implementation. These are also people who would then be able to create other assets that you might need as far as your 3D components to enhance your simulations. So it's always great to have someone who knows how to use 3D and great to have people who are very comfortable in working with Adobe products as well. Let's make sure we factor in the factory. 3D has already been on the market for quite a while, so a lot of factories have adopted 3D in some sense. Now remember, your factories are already accustomed to creating the kind of garments that you create because they've been creating them for you. So they may also have— be able to give you a better lens into which solutions better suit that product category. If your factory is already working in 3D, they may also be able to help you build out your skills, the skills of your team, and give you some assets to test out within your own environment a bit sooner. For example, if your factory can provide 3D simulations of some of the garments ahead of getting, uh, the first sample, those are also then simulations that you can share within the organization to see how people feel about them, to see what kind of information they can get from 3D, test them out in other departments. Sometimes we surprise ourselves when we share with within our own organizations, and our friends and team members provide ideas and solutions we had no lens for whatsoever. So if that's something your factory can do, that may help you get much further ahead in the game. And if you can really make the most of your investment in a 3D solution by using it in different departments, that's something that they're gonna love you for in the finance department. Another great thing to do before you start engaging some of the solution providers is really take stock of what you've already purchased. You'd be very surprised to know what sort of licenses may already exist within your company. As companies move on from one solution to the next, there are often licenses of older software that's left behind. These are great bargaining chips when you do speak with your solution providers if you already have licenses of earlier versions of their software. Because then it becomes an issue of an upgrade versus purchasing new licenses. So make sure you have great stock or a great idea of what you've already purchased, what sort of licenses you already have, and how they compare to where you want to go. This can definitely impact your decision as to which solution providers you're going to work with. But we want to make sure we're using the money that we've already spent in addition to any investment that we're adding to our 3D future. When you take a look at what you already have in-house, don't just look in your department. See what some of the other departments are using, what types of solutions they have today, and what they were using before. That may also be another space where they have licenses or skills with certain software that they can help you upskill your team with. So make sure when you're doing this research and this audit into what you have and what you've already purchased, make sure you're looking outside of your own circle. Naturally, as you're looking at what you have in-house, if you find there was a serious investment made with a software solution earlier on, you also want to take a look at why that implementation didn't stick, if it didn't stick. You know, there are plenty of cases where there are licenses that are just sitting around. If your company has already endeavored on some sort of revolution or purchased new software, it's really great to know what happened, who were the players, and what went wrong so you can make sure we succeed where maybe our predecessors were not able to. If you're having trouble figuring out what sort of software investments have been made in the past, this is a, a great place to walk over to the finance department. They'll probably have better records than even some of the people in certain departments knowing where money was spent. Uh, sometimes there are, uh, fiscal years ending and money that needs to be spent, uh, and it gets spent on software sometimes. So make sure you talk with your friends in the finance department to get a good idea of where you've already spent. Once you've taken a, a good look at who's doing what, who can do what, and what you already have in-house, this is a great place to start to string together some of these different factors to figure out what the low-hanging fruit can be in your implementation. By low-hanging fruit, I mean, where are you gonna get the earliest wins? We all love a return on our investment. So if we're thinking about that early and we have a great snapshot of what our team members are interested in, and what we've already spent money on, especially if we can capitalize on those investments of yesterday. These build champions up and down the ladder, and this is only going to help your implementation. So for low-hanging fruit, then, to give some of those early return on investments and to satisfy our champions, we want to make sure, again, we are implementing 3D at the right time and in the right places. Again, whether it's your fit team or your 3D team, if you have them doing the work of putting the simulations together, make sure you start with a category where they can see the fruits of their labor early. Uh, this is so important. Sometimes it's really easy to alienate your team if you don't start with really achievable goals. Uh, so again, those complicated garments, You wanna save those a little bit for later in your implementation when your champions are ready to take on that challenge. When you begin your 3D implementation and you're really looking for your champions, definitely look for the problem solvers and the people who are just naturally excited about 3D. I've seen 3D have a very polarizing effect sometimes within companies. Uh, remember you have very skilled people who may be scared of 3D. It does present new challenges, and going inside of that growth zone and stepping out of your comfort zone is not an easy thing for everyone to do. So as you're doing that, make sure you do what you can to bring along those people who may be scared, because once they're able to see some early wins and fruits of their own labor, then it may turn them around completely. And sometimes your best advocates are the people who are originally kind of apprehensive about making the journey. Another great way to think about who is your champion is to look at the people who like creating solutions. I like to think about the different personality types as someone who is a box checker versus someone who is a box creator. You have some people who do really well when they have very well-defined parameters for a project. They know exactly what to expect. They know when it will begin and when it will end. And those team members are crucial for making sure you keep everything moving along effectively. But your champions very often are the people who are willing to create new boxes and new spaces to work within for themselves and for others. This is what helps you move forward with your 3D implementation and with making it a success. As I've said, there are so many new opportunities that step into the 3D space so very regularly. You want to have team members who are ready to take advantage of all the new things that come, to test things out, try new ways of doing things, create new ways of presenting information, and, and making the lives of others within the organization a little bit better and easier as well with these new skills that they're bringing on board. That was a little bit about understanding your organization. Definitely have a great snapshot of where you are before you begin your 3D journey. This will help you get into a space of readiness to make great decisions, and that is something your team members up the ladder and down the ladder will really appreciate, and it'll help you bring those people people along for the ride and create new leaders within your organization. Next, we'll step into Module 7, which is taking a look at understanding the solutions. Now that you understand your organization and how you work, let's take a look at what's out there and how to get the most out of engaging with our solution providers.