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Enhancing Business Efficiency With Digital Twin

Natasha Rai, Director Digital Transformation Sourcing at Ralph Lauren

Natasha Rai, Director Digital Transformation Sourcing at Ralph Lauren

When I was approached to contribute an article about the digital twin and the latest technological advancements in the fashion industry, I figured a quick google search for ‘digital twin in fashion’ would turn up hundreds of articles on the subject. What new insights could I contribute that hadn’t already been written about and discussed at length before? So, I asked to write this piece with a different perspective instead – the true and full value of using digital prototypes in the fashion industry.

Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and understand the term ‘digital twin’ as the industry recognizes it. The concept of ‘digital twin’ encompasses multiple product types within the fashion industry - from footwear to accessories, apparel to materials, to even packaging and everything in between. To put it simply, a digital twin is a 3D representation of a garment, footwear, handbag or other accessories, but it’s much more than that. Equally important are the components associated with building this virtual asset. In apparel, it can be the avatar, the digital equivalent of the physical dress form or any physical body with a specific set of measurements; in footwear, it could be the outsole and engineered last. Across all product areas, it’s fabrics, textures and trims realized in a digital format that look (and in the case of digital materials for apparel, behave) as they would in the physical world. There are colors and workmanship in digital formats, sizing and fit information, poses and 3D simulation data – it’s an extensive list but it’s when these digital representations work together thata complete digital prototype or twin is created.

When implemented correctly, digital product creation (DPC) for fashion brands can ensure preservation of standards and centralization of important data required for product development. When a brand invests in building extensive digital libraries of digital twins of garments, accessories, body forms, fabrics, trims, color libraries and other data they are not only investing in speed, optimization, accuracy of design, savings but they are ensuring the longevity of assets and enabling cross functional communication, collaboration and acceptance of up-to-date standards, data, processes and formats across a complex organization. Under the right conditions, digital twins intend to eliminate inconsistencies in design and product intent and eventually this transformation aims to drive sustainable change within the organization.

However, digital product creation increases efficiency only when we focus on quality. Attention to quality ensures we are using trusted data to produce a trusted digital twin on which decisions can be made. Questioning the quality and accuracy of digital data should never be an obstacle to decision making on digital twins. When a brand does not compromise the quality of its physical product, the same importance must be attested to digital data. Ultimately, a digital twin should live as a single source of truth.

Ultimately a digital twin should live as a single source of truth.

But a perfect rendering of a digital twin is not the goal. While a digital twin is generally the most sought after and spoken about in the DPC space, brands can kick off their 3D journey by executing their digital strategy through the equally valuable ‘3D model’. It’s a common misperception amongst brands that all 3D assets should be photorealistic copies of the product to enable decision making and anything less than that falls short. The power of a 3D model and a digital twin lies in its ability to help us prototype - To iterate design, fit and testing on a product repeatedly in a short period of time with remarkable accuracy and early enough in the product lifecycle that it creates efficiencies. In an industry, where the typical development lead time of a product can range anywhere from a few months to a year, this is the true benefit.

A true digital twin becomes a powerful tool that aids in reducing development time, effort, cost and in this reality of climate change as we are living it while seeing the toll it’s taking, the fashion industry cannot wait for digital transformation to evolve at a traditional pace any longer.

Ahigh-quality3D model or digital twin will inevitably spark innovation and holds enough structured data which can be further refined along the way - as it serves to improve everything from design, development to upstream customer experiences such as forecasting future trends and providing new digital business opportunities. But enabling the industry to protype on a digital sample to get a ‘right first time’ physical sample or product – that is the real value of a digital twin.