Page 64 - Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

Developing apparel sizing system using anthropometric data 93

significant at this point for each country in the world. At the moment, there are only a
handful of countries that have completed their national sizing system such as Korean
size, Thailand size, Taiwan size, Japan size, Mexico size, Spanish size, Australia size,
United Kingdom size, and North America size. Some of the countries now conducting
the anthropometric research are India, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

4.2 Sizing system development and methodology

The process of developing the sizing system for any target market can be observed
using the following procedure as shown in Fig. 4.1. The targeted sample for this meth-
odology is demonstrated for the sample of female (7–12 and 13–17years old). The
illustrated procedure and process are conducted for children, and the original data
were collected within 6months. Anyhow the same process can be completed for
the adult data too.
In this chapter, Fig. 4.1 illustrated the whole process to develop sizing system as
shown later.
There are basically three important stages in sizing system development: Stages 1,
2, and 3. Stage 1 consists of the first process of anthropometric data collection, Stage 2
is the sizing data analysis, and Stage 3 consist of sizing system development. In gen-
eral, it is imperative to identify important body dimensions for the development of
sizing system. This is the first process after obtaining the data collection in which dur-
ing the first stage of anthropometric survey, different body dimensions are measured
on each person to develop sizing system. Then, from these body dimensions, only
important body dimensions are selected to cluster sample population into similar body
dimensions.
These important body dimensions are known as key dimensions or control dimen-
sions. Key dimensions are the best representative of body shapes and sizes in which
the sizing system is created (Adu-Boakye et al., 2012). Key dimensions consist of pri-
mary dimensions and secondary dimensions. Two distinct techniques to identify the

STAGE 1 : STAGE 2 : STAGE 3 :
Anthropometric Sizing Sizing system
data analysis data analysis development

• Fieldwork • Size system
• Multivariate anaysis
• Anthropometric development
planning • Principal Component • Size system
analysis (PCA)
• Antropometric validation
survey • Body classification
• Anthropometric • Body size
analysis determination

Fig. 4.1 Sizing system development process.