Complete the production of over 900 color combinations and all samples within two weeks, complete the 3D virtual sample ordering meeting with high quality presentation, and save about 75% of the overall progress, greatly reducing time costs, labor costs and material costs… During the epidemic, ANTA Group’s trial of digital 3D design has brought tangible results.
In the first half of 2020, Anta Group Strategic adjustments have been made in R&D, production, supply chain, retail platform and other aspects. With the iron army culture of strong execution, we have built consensus, acted in a unified manner, proactively promoted a number of forward-looking changes, and focused on the group’s digital strategy and direct-to-consumer (Direct) to Consumer) business model transformation and upgrading. “Led by the two major strategies of digitalization and direct-to-consumer, Anta has taken the lead in realizing the large-scale application of digital design in the industry to explore the digital transformation of design, which has greatly promoted the cost reduction and efficiency improvement of the design process, and will also drive the digital upgrade of its entire chain. .” said Li Ling, vice president of Anta Group.
A disruptive industry change
Reporter operating in ANTA Xiamen The center saw that the staff showed two pictures of the shoes on the computer screen, one was a 3D rendering designed by the design tool “Ideation”, and the other was a photo of the actual shoe taken with a camera. “Almost exactly the same! Even if you look at the texture details, there is no difference between the two pictures. Comparing them together is more difficult than the ‘spot the difference’ game.” Many people present sighed like this.
Achieving a high degree of consistency between digital design drawings and physical photos is Anta’s latest achievement in the field of digital design.
It is reported that Anta uses the designer’s 2D design drawings to perform 3D modeling through the algorithms and databases of design tools, and finally presents a 3D design effect. Lin Zisen, the provider of the design tool platform and CEO of Shidi Intelligence, said that what digital design hopes to achieve is the effect of “what you see” is what you “get”. “The final produced shoes are infinitely close to the designed 3D drawings.
”How do you view the effects of large-scale application of digital design on the field of shoes and apparel? Zheng Minglian, director of Anta’s sports and lifestyle category, used a vivid metaphor: It is equivalent to the transition from 4G to 5G in the mobile phone field. Different from clothing design, the 3D modeling design of footwear uses complex curves, which belongs to the same technical principle as the design of cars, airplanes, and spacecrafts. In actual production, clothes have an average of about 50 processes, and shoes have about 120 processes. After the entire process, the total cost of a shoe from design draft to confirmed production can be as high as 10,000 yuan. The entire cycle from design to release of a pair of shoes takes 8-12 months, and in the end only 20%-30% of the design is completed. will enter the production process.
Focusing on the fundamental purpose of returning to cost reduction and efficiency improvement, Anta has calculated an economic account: designing 1,000 shoes per year For example, assuming there are 4,000 color combinations, it would cost about 10 million yuan to make all physical sample shoes. In the traditional model, only 20%-30% of the 4,000 samples will be selected and put into production. The unselected physical sample shoes will be discarded, and 7 to 8 million yuan will be wasted for the purpose of “taking a look” in the review process. During this period, there are still a lot of logistics and labor costs. On the digital design platform, you can directly use the digitally designed 3D virtual sample design drawings to select products, select 300-400 virtual samples from the 4,000 virtual sample color schemes, and then make them into physical objects, thus reducing the quantity by more than half. Physical samples greatly reduce the cost of proofing, and the total cost is about 1/5 of the original.
Promote the digitization of the entire chain “The outside world can’t get in, and we can’t get out. This is a problem encountered by most Chinese companies this year.” Vice President of Shoe Purchasing at Anta Group Zhang Xixiang made no secret, “After the epidemic this year, many factories did not start operations. Many of our samples could not make it to the preview meeting, and even the preview meeting was put online. At this time, we need an external technical team to assist us.”
According to reports, the most direct way Shidi can help Anta so far is to improve efficiency. “We have set a goal at Anta to shorten the product development cycle and complete the first round of development and design in two weeks.” In order to achieve the goal, Shidi uses its own material library and uses AI technology to automatically generate color matching, design, and 3D technology. After modeling and proofing, the next step is to quickly capture Chinese social media information data, capture and analyze the information, and use the system to create different colors for reference by designers.
This is actually just a small step in Anta’s digitalization. What Anta wants to do is not simply a digital scanning and VR project, but the entire chain including the digitization of the supply chain platform. Road digitization. “In the past, we started from scratch, but today we need not just 0 to 1, but 0 to 10,” Zhang Xixiang clearly positioned the supply chain digitalization, “”It is necessary to ensure that all the supplier’s output is shared with my information, and all input and output data can be clearly grasped.”
The benefits of this The first is to change the traditional “production-oriented” to “market-oriented”. This is because through data, Anta can grasp the output information of the sales end and the supply chain end, and also allow the supply chain end to see the front-end sales situation, so as to make decisions based on the data. The sales situation adjusts the production demand to meet the needs of front-end consumers.
Take the lead in realizing large-scale application “International brands were the first to propose this concept, but they have always There is no way to implement batch application. “Ni Yaping, deputy director of technical engineering of Anta’s Sports Lifestyle Division, who has been working in the field of sports shoes and apparel for many years, said, “Anta has realized digital design of dozens or hundreds of models a quarter, and is the first to realize the large-scale application of digital design. ”
It is reported that Nike has joined hands with Dell and Meta to demonstrate the potential of advanced technologies such as VR and MR in future design. Nike and Adidas have begun to use MODO (3D modeling design software) as their conceptual design. However, the two major brands are still stuck in the state of conceptual design and partial application. In fact, Anta has verified the feasibility of digital design and has also seen huge potential. During the epidemic, affected by logistics and transportation Due to the impact of the epidemic, companies cannot send samples to designers, and order transactions can only rely on the photo effects of the samples and the trust of both parties.
“We passed The 3D virtual samples designed by the platform presented the design and texture with a high degree of restoration. We also held a virtual ordering meeting. Finally, the brands, dealers, etc. completed the orders through the virtual ordering meeting. Zheng Minglian revealed that all categories of Anta are currently undergoing digital design changes, and the sports and lifestyle category division has taken the lead in realizing large-scale application and completely tried the entire process. Not only the main brand of Anta, but also the FILA brand of Anta Group will be in the order fair soon. On this occasion, through the virtual samples created by Ideation, the group completed the production of 900+ color combinations and all samples within two weeks, and completed the selection meeting as scheduled, which was unimaginable in the past.
In fact, with the two major strategies of digitalization and direct-to-consumer as the core, Anta’s digital transformation of the entire chain has begun.
In the first half of the year, Anta Group and IBM jointly carried out the latest The strategic planning of digital transformation in each stage will improve management efficiency by building a digital platform; on the marketing side, comprehensively plan the touch points to interact with consumers, carefully operate private domain traffic, and revitalize the accumulated big data assets of hundreds of millions of consumers to provide fast and accurate services. Marketing provides the foundation; on the production side, we work with BCG to formulate the group’s supply chain development strategy and create a flexible supply chain. Through the three major measures of digitalization, technological breakthroughs and material breakthroughs, we can accelerate product design, development, and production to empower the development of each brand, and effectively Control inventory effectively and maintain reasonable inventory levels; on the logistics side, we have established an O2O model to integrate online and offline inventory, increasing retail direct distribution capabilities by 35%, reducing the allocation of goods, reducing operating costs, maximizing inventory efficiency, and achieving significant savings. Expenditure.
“Digital transformation based on consumption big data is the top priority for the entire Anta Group this year. Under the background of the epidemic, we will improve Brand digital capabilities are a smart move. Anta Group’s investment in digital transformation and ultimate value led by technology will exceed RMB 1 billion! “Li Ling said in the end.</p
