Customization of Consumer Goods: First Steps to Fully Customizable Fashionable Ladies' Shoes

The production of fashionable footwear has basically been the same for almost a century. It consists of combining elements of various materials together formed around a physical shape – the last – thereby making a product that fits around the foot – the shoe. This process requires different stages in production, transport of semi-finished products, intermediate components etc. In the European Community funded project “CEC-madeshoe” (www.cec-made-shoe.com) one of the innovation goals has been defined as the development of a product concept and underlying production method with which this traditional manufacturing process is radically transformed, the so-called Direct Manufactured Shoe. Production aspects such as transport, complex logistics, long lead times, and components such as lasts, stiffeners etc. are avoided and the possibility to personalize the shoe is included. This goal was met in a research project in which the production of footwear was approached from the Rapid Manufacturing (RM) point of view. Such a new approach to footwear requires a lot of background knowledge of footwear requirements, production processes, material properties and design opportunities and a lot of creative input from a design point of view.