Browsing by Author "Vithanage, CP"

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    item: Article-Abstract
    The Development of pant sizing system for Sri Lankan females
    (2015-09-05) Vithanage, CP; Jayawrdana, TSS; Niles, SN
    Mass production in the garment industry requires pre-defined size charts based on up-to-date anthropometric data. These standard size charts provide information for anufacturers and retailers to plan the production and the inventories. Every country must have their own sizing systems based on the target population to provide better fit for ready- to – wear clothing which improves customer satisfaction. An anthropometric survey of Sri Lankan females aged 20-30 years was conducted. 645 females were selected for a pilot study representing 5 provinces in Sri Lanka. Eight major easurements of female lower body were taken following the ISO 8559:1998 standard. Principle Component Analysis was used to reduce the variables in to 2 major components and identify key variables. Two- stage Cluster analysis; Hierarchical cluster analysis and K-means algorithm, was used to find the body types and segment the data into more homogeneous clusters. Five different body types were identified and under each body type, many sizes were built up based on three key measurements. Sizing system for Cluster 1; Body type D, was shown with the percentage of population for each size which will be useful for manufacturers and retailers to plan production and inventory.
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    item: Article-Abstract
    Introducing a high-tech mastectomy bra to Sri Lankan market
    (2015-09-05) Vithanage, CP; Subodha, U
    The breast cancer is the most common cancer in the world. Mastectomy bra is the recommended bra for the breast cancer affected patient after the surgery to meet her all psychological needs . The scope of the study was to identify the current market for mastectomy bra in Sri Lanka and discuss the importance of targeting it by applying the combination of eco and High-Tech concepts. Through questionnaire survey and interviews, the lingerie needs of breast cancer affected patient as well as the way of meeting them via a mastectomy bra which can be utilized the essence of ayurvedic treatments was identified. The requirements of the consumer, current market and the market gap were identified. Silver has the properties of breast cancer healing and the pure natural silver plated X- static yarn can be used instead of Silver. The study has proposed the X-static yarns to develop mastectomy bra to meet the consumer’s requirements in Sri Lankan market. Result shows that there is a good potential of developing fabric and bra cups using X-static yarn in Sri Lankan market to meet the post-surgery lingerie requirement.
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    item: Article-Abstract
    Kernel-based clustering approach in developing apparel size charts
    Vithanage, CP; Jayawardane, TSS; Thilakaratne, CD; Niles, SN
    With the industry revolution, apparel products also become more sophisticated moving from the basic purpose of clothing to aesthetic appeal of the garment embracing the concepts garment fitting and fashion. Garment fitting is a key technical essential for comfortable wearing. In garment fitting, size refers to a set of specified values of body measurements, such that it will provide a means for garments perfectly fit to a person. With the advent of computer software and improved data mining techniques, researchers attempted new advances in formulation of size charts with a better fit. This article suggests a kernel-based clustering approach in developing an effective size chart for the pants of Sri Lankan females. A new kernel based approach “Global Kernel K- means clustering” was successfully deployed to cluster lower body anthropometric data of Sri Lankan females within the age range of 20-40 years. Through the proposed Kernel- based clustering method can effectively handle highly non-linear data in input space which is a key property of lower body anthropometric data and make it linearly separable in feature space without reduction in dimensions and also mathematically justified. Through this method promising results could be obtained and further clustering method was internally validated with kernel based Dunn’s index. The level of fitness of the developed size chart was also evaluated with the aggregate loss of fit factor. The proposed method has strong implications to utilize globally in developing size charts.
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    item: Thesis-Full-text
    A Novel approach in formulating a size chart for female pants
    Vithanage, CP; Jayawardane, TSS; Niles, N; Tilakaratne, CD
    Each country understands that they need their own size charts representing their population because researchers have found that human body shapes, proportions and measurements change significantly due to the geographical and demographical differences. Even though, many countries have developed their own size charts, ready-to-wear apparel industry still faces the problem of poor fit of apparels. Reasons for this fit problems may be due to several factors such as limitations of existing size chart development approaches, lack of up-to-date anthropometric data of the relevant population, vast body shape differences among the population, and restrictions in mass production systems. In this research, one of the above problems; issues in existing size chart development approaches, was studied comprehensively in order to identify drawbacks of the size chart development approaches. Statistical approach which uses descriptive statistics, k-means clustering combined with factor analysis and classification and regression decision tree method were widely used popular size chart development approaches. With the current lower body anthropometric data of Sri Lankan females of age 20-40 years, limitations of the above approaches were investigated. Through this explorative analysis, limitations of current approaches and potential improvements for a better approach were discerned. Thereby a novel approach for development of size charts was formulated. The proposed approach is capable of handling linearly inseparable data with high dimensionality without variable reduction. Further, number of clusters can be objectively determined and the transformation function could be optimized by tuning the parameters of it. Kernel based learning is one of the latest data mining approaches in pattern recognition. A kernel based clustering technique called “global kernel k-means clustering technique”, was adopted to cluster lower body anthropometric data in the proposed method. Selection of proper kernel function and tuning of kernel parameters are crucial in successful data clustering. For determining the number of clusters objectively, kernel based Dunn’s index, which is one of the cluster validation technique, was successfully instrumented in the said novel approach. Thereby the lower body anthropometric dataset of females was successfully clustered through the proposed novel approach taking all variables into account. It was also proved that the developed size chart could successfully eliminate the fitting problems of Sri Lankan female pants. The size chart was validated through a well accepted index called Aggregate Loss of Fit index on theoretical ground and the live model fitting of fabricated pants according to the size chart through a standard feedback questionnaire. The complete approach in developing size charts could be of interest to other clustering applications in many fields also