Paris, May 3, 2007 – Lectra, the world leader in software, CAD/CAM equipment and related services dedicated to the fashion, automotive and furniture markets, presents its complete and unique range of innovative solutions, specifically designed for the upholstery industry, on its 350 square-meter stand at the Interzum 2007 held in Cologne, Germany, from May 9th to 12th (Hall 9.1 / Stand B030 - C031). 

“Known as the world leading trade fair for the furniture industry, Interzum represents for Lectra a unique platform of exchange on innovations and visions”, explains Bruno Blain, Director of Lectra’s Furniture Business. “We are convinced that with more than 1,300 exhibitors and more than 50,000 visitors expected from all around the world, Interzum will provide us the opportunity to demonstrate that our solutions are the best suited to face market evolutions and to help our customers overcoming their industrial challenges.” 

Lectra will showcase the strengths of its latest offering, from 3D virtual prototyping and product development with DesignConcept Furniture, to fabric and leather cutting with the new generation of VectorFurniture and MFC Furniture  respectively. 

DesignConcept Furniture: An unmatched 3D solution designed for the upholstery market 

The first 3D CAD solution completely dedicated to the furniture market, DesignConcept Furniture enables prototyping and product development specialists to explore numerous ways for creation and productivity. With high-performance visualization tools, this new version of DesignConcept Furniture allows designers to create virtual prototypes directly from designers’ sketches or to easily import any 3D data. Marketing managers can therefore rapidly make stylistic decisions, before building the physical prototype, thus reducing time to market. 

Thanks to its unique pattern-flattening capability and numerous enhanced modelling features, DesignConcept Furniture  significantly accelerates product development, for both traditional furniture and more complex contemporary models. 

A special conference dedicated to DesignConcept Furniture  will be held on May, 10th, from 15:30 to 16:00, at the Speaker's Corner, Piazza Hall 10.2 / F48 - G49. 

VectorFurniture: The powerful, intelligent new generation of Lectra cutters for any type of fabrics 

Adapted to mass production as well as to small and medium series, the range of VectorFurniture automated fabric cutting solutions is at the heart of Lectra’s complete, intelligent cutting room offering that is totally dedicated to the manufacturers of upholstered furniture. 

The equipment and software perfectly integrate cut plans from the market’s major CAD software, notably Lectra’s automated marker-making solutions: the VectorFurniture technology guarantees significant material saving, unrivalled productivity and precision adapted to all types of shapes and materials to be cut. 

MFC Furniture: A perfect blend of experience and technology for leather applications 

With its enhanced user interface and nesting software suite, the new version of MFC Furniture, optimizes the four stages of the leather-cutting process: hide and defects identification, nesting, cutting and pieces offloading. 

Thanks to its advanced leather cutting solution, Lectra enables the furniture manufacturers to optimize their process - regardless of the size of the operations, and the type of models or leathers processed - while reducing lead-time production, increasing quality of products, reducing costs drastically, and achieving the level of flexibility, responsiveness and competitiveness that the market conditions are calling for. 

Lectra’s Smart Services: bringing still more added value to customers 

Lectra’s new Power service solutions provide customers with tailored expertise and high value-added benefits to help them improve the overall performance of their production systems and protect their investment. This new offering includes complete, real-time monitoring of customers’ systems by Lectra’s experts in the International Call Centers, a program of preventive maintenance, and upgrading of cutter software. The flexibility of these made-to-measure contracts enables Lectra customers to choose the most efficient combination of their own internal competencies and those of Lectra’s experts.