Very quickly, the garment-dyeing process, which only concerned knitwear, enabled Benetton
to subcontract standardized manufacturing steps (knitting, assembling, and finishing). Benetton only
kept the really strategic steps, namely dyeing, This approach was facilitated by the
introduction of CAD/CAM, which strongly reduced the risks of discrepancy between specifications
and output. All in all, an average 80 per cent of Benetton’s manufacturing was externalized. Table 1
shows the breakdown depending on production steps.