How mobile body measuring software solves the biggest challenges of uniform manufacturing

The current manual process for manufacturers and distributors of uniforms involves people and measuring tapes. For those who have leaned into technology, large and expensive scanning hardware is also an option. Either option drains resources and is time-consuming. Further, we as humans lose and gain weight which means that data is hard and expensive to update (assuming someone has even created a database of body measurements for their employees).

And the bigger the company, the bigger the collateral damage.

As brands and businesses grow, so does the distance tailors need to travel to measure employees, or vice versa, which puts a financial strain on the company in both travel expenses and lost productivity due to travel time.

The average manual body measuring procedure takes approximately 5-20 minutes. Meanwhile ordering uniforms in bulk – when an in-person measurement is required – automatically necessitates a one-by-one approach all destined to be time-consuming and wasteful.

And if to speed up the process, with long travel times, pressure to arrive quickly, and an overwhelming number of people to measure, tailors are stressed, tired, and prone to making mistakes. While ill-fitting, uncomfortable, too-tight uniforms may seem inconsequential to a layperson, professionals know that it does have serious implications and may pose safety hazards.

Besides, if the workwear or protective clothing appears to be ill-fitting because of the poorly taken measurements or a change of size – gaining or losing weight – it is usually up to the employee to bare the financial burden to have the item tailored to fit properly.

Another issue is the sheer number of people that large companies have to measure. Depending on the number of workers to be measured, manufacturers have to supply their own trained employees to take the measurements. So, imagine measuring 18,000 pilots for American Airlines, 70,000 annually-recruited soldiers, or 1,900,000 employees of the largest fast-food chain all over the world. The number of specialists needed to manually serve all these people is immense.

While it’s obvious that measuring for a uniform with a tape measure is an expensive in-person task draining tons of time, finance, and human resources, advances in technology have created an opportunity to digitize this process with mobile body scanning.