Novelties include a fully connected hide-cutting room, an Industry 4.0 application that will help customers improve the quality of their cutting operations, optimise their leather use and improve their operational excellence. That’s just one of the proposals in the offing from a packed programme of innovations being launched by Lectra, the technology and equipment colossus for the fashion and automotive industries. Between 2017 and 2019 the company will invest 10% of its revenue in Research and Development, so that by the end of that three-year period, spending on R&D will be 50% higher than in 2016. A package of solutions is on the horizon that will first be offered to a limited circle of key clients and then commercialized from 2018 onwards. In 2019 there will be further novelties. This was announced by Céline Choussy Bedouel, Lectra’s CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) as she presented the “Strategic Roadmap to Industry 4.0” at the beginning of the two-day event organized by the multinational company in Bordeaux (19-20 April). Her statements are reported on the leatherbiz.com website: “We’ve been working on this, on the Internet of Things, for ten years now. We already have applications that put the factory at the heart of the value chain by connecting different operations in real time.” Meanwhile, Sun Zhongwei, the director of the Cutting Unit at Yanfeng Automotive Interiors, producer of door and instrument panels, also appeared on the podium, focusing attention on the Chinese automobile market. The manager envisaged a growth of 5% in 2017 in sales of premium range cars in the People’s Republic in the wake of the 6.9% growth in GDP. This trend will lead to a growth in the market share of leather interiors for cars, which currently represents 13% of the market.
Lectra focuses on Industry 4.0: the hide-cutting room will be ultra-connected. Meanwhile in China, the market for premium cars is growing
