COMPARISON OF CAD AND MANUAL SYSTEM EFFICIENCY IN PRE-PRODUCTION PREPARATION PROCESS

Abstract

In the ready-made clothing industry, computer aided design (CAD) systems are most commonly used for basic pattern making, grading and marker making processes. Even though there are various software in this area in the market, pattern making process is still performed manually in several ready-made clothing businesses. In this research, the amount of time required for the processes of clothing technical pattern making, modelling, grading and marker making via CAD systems has been compared to time required for the manual method, with the aim of determining the more efficient approach. To this end, time measurements for the steps of these processes, specified by 3 expert pattern designers and 3 CAD operators, were taken and compared. The comparison has been focused on the aspects of processes that made a difference in terms of time, the effect of these processes on total time and the identification of the factors that resulted in the time difference. Upper-body clothing has been chosen as the focus of this study due to the involvement of several steps in the processes of basic pattern making and grading. The acquired data has shown that the process times required for CAD systems have been shorter than those for manual design in every step that have an important place in the pre-production preparation process.