Proposition of a PLM tool to support textile design: A case study applied to the definition of the early stages of design requirements

•The key stakes in the implementation of a new PLM tool for the early stages of design in textile industry. Following a comprehensive overview of existing PLM solutions and of the suitability of their functions to the world of textile design, we mapped and quantified the collaborative exchanges involved in the design of a textile product in the Devanlay company, based on a series of semi-directed interviews.•The technical data which must be managed by the future system. The emergence of PLM tools, following increasing competition between businesses requires a fine-grained analysis of user needs, in terms of collaboration and exchanges of technical data before designing and deploying the system.•The field work that allowed us to specify and test some useful solutions to implement a PLM solution. This research work opens many different prospects. The current climate of economic competition forces businesses to adapt more than ever to the expectations of their customers. Faced with new challenges, practices in textile design have evolved in order to be able to manage projects in new work environments. After presenting a state of the art overview of collaborative tools used in product design and making functional comparison between PLM solutions, our paper proposes a case study for the development and testing of a collaborative platform in the textile industry, focusing on the definition of early stages of design needs. The scientific contributions presented in this paper are a state of the art of current PLM solutions and their application in the field of textile design; and a case study where we will present, define, and test the mock-up of a collaborative tool to assist the early stages, based on identified intermediary representations.