Abstract:

“Fas.P.onSite” (Fashion Production on Site) is an experimental service design project, developed within the ASP course (Alta Scuola Politecnica is a school for young talents who wish to develop their potential in a multidisciplinary community. ASP student community is formed by applicants to the Master of Science - MSc The Laurea Magistrale - programs in Engineering, Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino).
The service investigates the possibility to make sustainable the whole process of knitwear, including design, production and sale. It is based on the idea that the onsite production could be a new productive framework able to integrate the different phases of design productive process in the same site could be an enabler to foster new scenarios for product-service sustainability.
The concept of “Fas.P.onSite” regards also the possibility to enhance urban contexts industrial production experimenting a new service and business models in order to suggest an alternative vision to the dramatic phenomenon of de-localization of productive activities. It is a new brand of a product service system organized in a physical place (fashion lab) where it is possible to design, project and produce knitwear clothing on demand or/and in real time, in a very short time in order to deliver it directly to the final customer. It is possible using special knitting machinery that produce whole garments developed by Shima Sheiki company.
The service innovation rises from the convergence between production and distribution processes: it creates an alternative to the re-location of production, and the consequent loss of skills, through the improvement of new knowledge related to new technologies and alternative production systems.
It also uses a new idea of customer role involving him as co-designer and co-producer; this open innovation model is the heart of “Fas.P.onSite” concept, which is an evolution of a knitting workshop, a place where many different functions and activities involved in the production process (design, production and sale) are mixed together.
Like an integrated factory that deeply changes and innovates the concept of customer experience, which becomes the centre of the manufacturing process, fully representing the idea of on demand fashion production.
Moreover, the concept includes the idea of applying the km0 paradigm for services and production activities done in the fashion lab. Using this concept the idea is to trace the whole chain production giving an added value for customer experience creating a new idea for sustainable services development.
Relevance to Design Practice - The concept and the innovation model could be implemented in a real context (an urban context) applying the service design framework to the knitting productive chain considering the sustainability (related also to the traceability process) as an important driver to design the services system included also to involve the consumer in a new consumption model. The research concept could also be implemented as a pilot project collaborating with the company that produces knitting machineries, fashion designer, services designer, managers and practitoners in fashion sector.

Keywords:

Service design, services for knitting production, sustainable design process, research in didactics.