Development of a fully automatic manufacturing system for industria l footwear

Objective

European footwear industry faces worldwide competitors with old production tools where automation is partly developed. The efficiency of a cycle of production is given by the longest operations manually done and the automation has to be totally organised in order to recover markets share, and win new one. This project has the goal to define a entire automated tool for the industrial footwear. Many companies are concerned in Europe. On top of the development of specific automatic equipment, the technical solutions to be found have to provide a cheap way to identify each element of a shoe model. Each model has different shapes, sizes colours, etc... This computer controlled equipment will enable SME's to respond to small size orders to produce many different models as requested. The customers orders will drive the production. High productivity gain up are expected and workers can be reaffected to less tedious and repetitive work. The volonty of modernisation will drive them to achieve the following objectives: * decrease of manufacturing cycle * improvement of manufacturing reproductibility * permanent control of manufacturing process * optimal use of manufacturing capacity * storage of know-how - * high flexibility of the production cycle Some important figures which sum up the potential gains for the SMEs. projy number of lasts per model 100 600 cycle time for the return of 2 days number of persons on the production line 4 to 6 20 exit The proposed automated project will include launching, assembly, finish and packaging which are operations where important gains of productivity will be reached.

Programme(s)

• FP4-BRITE/EURAM 3 - Specific research and technological development programme in the field of industrial and materials technologies, 1994-1998

Topic(s)

• 0101 - Incorporation of new technologies into production systems

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (6)