A new methodology for the development of sizing systems for the mass customization of garments

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to derive a new method for developing sizing systems for the mass customization of garments.

Design/methodology/approach

A range of recently published works has been studied. A new method is derived by following a basic statistical analysis on anthropometric data which are supported by an iterative mass customization model and introduced “satisfaction performance” indices. The derived method is applied successfully to an anthropometric data consisting of 12,810 Greek men.

Findings

With the proposed method, it is possible to control the degree of mass customization and the corresponding number of garment sizes. Under this way, a balance between the number of sizes (in other words: production cost) and the percentage satisfaction of consumers can be achieved. The proposed method consists of six subsequent tasks which are applied to the target population data for the development of mass customization models for male shirts, coats and trousers.

Research limitations/implications

Future work could be focused on the development of methods for the automatic garments grading with respect to the proposed mass customization models and practise.

Originality/value

The methodology presented in this paper can be applied to the development of mass customization models for other categories of garments and target population.

Citation

Mpampa, M.L., Azariadis, P.N. and Sapidis, N.S. (2010), "A new methodology for the development of sizing systems for the mass customization of garments", International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 49-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/09556221011008802