Another ‘stylish’ PLM operation located near Lake Como in Italy, but what else would you expect from one of the world’s leading fashion capitals? The company is part of the Gruppo Sessanta organisation that operates across a wide range of industries, products, consulting and services. This is a sound PLM company to keep an eye on and one that is making significant input into its current PLM solution.

Porini was founded in 1968 by the current owner, Dr. Porini. The company started life consulting to the Textiles and Apparel sectors and in the mid 1970’s, they decided to use their superior process knowledge to embark on software development to help broaden the offering. With headquarters located in Mornasco and a second office in Trento (Italy), they also operate out of three other locations: Portugal, USA-New York and Tennessee (owned offices). The team is around 60 strong split across these locations. Their clients include Manufactures, Textile Mills and Retailers & Brands. Porini is a strong growing business with a clear mission to expand over the next few years.

Solution

The PLM solution benchmarked was V3.0, which was launched in January 2009. The original PLM solution was developed back in 1998. With strong emphasis on Textiles, they clearly have a deep functionality around this area. In general, the solution offers a broad set of Apparel & Textile processes. Supported by a powerful workflow engine that operates at all levels of the product development stages including materials/components & products. Reporting is adequate, but could be improved;   technical specification print views are all standard and would meet the needs of most customers with minimal change required.

Technical

In 1974, they started building tailored business information solutions based on RPG programming language and by the late 1980’s, they made a strategic choice to move to the AS400 platform. In 1994, they launched their new ERP solution for the Textiles sector and by 1995 they had built their Apparel ERP version. In 1996, the company embarked on development program using the Microsoft platform and by 1998 amongst other solutions they brought to market their first version of PDM.  Moving to recent times, Porini became a Microsoft certified partner and has continued to develop solutions specifically for the Textile & Apparel sectors based on the Microsoft Dynamics AX - .Net Framework. Today the business offers ERP/PDM/PLM solutions to the Apparel & Textiles sectors with deep domain expertise within both sectors. From a technical standpoint, their PLM solution scores reasonably well built on Microsoft’s technology stack, using a SQL database, programmed in .Net framework with their own internally developed Workflow engine. The solution offers good performance and was reliable during the three day benchmarking sessions.

Summary

Overall, a good PLM offering with a broad and deep set of processes. A little lacking in one or two areas, which I’m please to confirm was proven to be on their development roadmap, shown during the benchmark sessions. What they lack in some areas, they more than make up for it in others where they really excel themselves. We would recommend Porini as a positive contender for any SME (Small Medium Enterprise) companies within the following sectors (Retail, Brands, Agents, Textiles, Footwear, and Manufacturing).