 In the late 1960s, American apparel manufacturing was labor-intensive, completely without automation, and rapidly leaving the country for cheap foreign labor.Gerber developed a numerically controlled machine (the GERBERcutter S-70) for cutting large quantities of tall stacks of cloth accurately—3,500 pieces for 50 men's suits in less than three minutes.The GERBERcutter itself, which Gerber introduced in 1969, has been widely cited as the most important technological advance of the century, because it offered apparel factories significant savings in wasted cloth, which was the greatest cost factor in producing a garment, and because it enabled a computer-automated manufacturing system.