For a product to be designed properly, it must be able to be manufactured in sufficient quantity, in reasonable time, and at appropriate costs for its market. The apparel industry is failing to fulfill any of these requirements and individual firms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. CAD/CAM vendors are not designing the appropriate technology for the technical design or pattern making segment, and not considering the domain expertise already inherent in the industry. Stylometrics, an image codification language, representing pattern styles as operational primitives, was designed to fill the missing gap of a 3-D/2-D Pattern Design System (PDS). Researchers will investigate the feasibility of computer-supported decisionmaking in the apparel industry, using this foundation language in Phase I. They will research the possibility of linking this foundation PDS with other support tools incorporating information from manufacturing and marketing (specifications of requirements). Having the PDS and other support tools available at point-of-design (POD) will not only assure a new product's manufacturability and acceptability but also reduce the time required to bring that product to market, therefore making the design component cost efficient.The potential commercial application as described by the awardee: Potential applications of a computer-supported decision making system include: a 3-D/2-D computer-aided design system; an electronic encyclopedia built on an expert system; image compression techniques for Electronic Graphic Interchange; software for consumer interfaces; and an apparel industry technology and information center linking design, manufacturing, and marketing.
