The Knowledge Based System to Support the Subjective Hand Evaluation Process of Fabric Swatch Selection in Fashion and Textile Industry

The current dynamic market with impulse purchasing preferences from customers and unpredictable demands in fashion and textile industry has made the product life cycle for fashion product becomes shorter. There is a huge demand for new fashion products that leads a pressure for fashion enterprises to increase efficiency in responsiveness and distribution along supply chain. During the new product development process, the subjective hand evaluation process of fabric selection is the critical process and performed by trial and error method and huge amount of information are generated. In order to speed up the fabric selection process, a knowledge based system (KBS) is introduced. The proposed system adopts nearest neighbor technique and argumentation concept theory to support knowledge retrieval and solve the knowledge validation problem. The outcome of this study in real industrial application shows that the proposed system enhance a garment enterprise´s competitiveness by shortening the subjective hand evaluation process time of fabric selection through the provision of fabric knowledge and reliable information management support.