Shoes made to measure for every wallet

Fashion trends change more and more quickly and it is only when sales of the current collection have started that it becomes clear which models are in high demand. The reproduction of these models is rarely possible in the short time required, as the delivery time for leather, for example, which has to be dyed to a very specific colour, can be several months.

Among other things, all this leads to the fact that on average less than half of the total shoe production for Western Europe can be sold regularly in this target market. The rest is sold at sometimes massively reduced prices or even has to be disposed of.

Solution approach Mass Customization
Mass customization means shoes made to measure, manufactured cost-efficiently on mass production machines. A market survey in Western Europe has shown that customers are prepared to pay up to two times more for customised shoes.

weeks and pay 20 % more. This makes the mass customization approach attractive for shoe manufacturers if they succeed in converting production to batch size 1 cost-effectively, achieving the required delivery time of a maximum of two weeks and establishing a continuous, consistent flow of information and materials.

Mass customization enables shoe manufacturers to sell up to 100 % of the total quantity produced at regular prices. The current high proportion of shoes that are not sold regularly and are therefore heavily reduced or even disposed of no longer applies. This is because behind every pair of shoes that is produced there is a real customer need and a binding customer order. This also has a direct positive impact on the ecological balance sheet. Furthermore, the market share increases, because mass customization unifies the customer requirements for exact fit and desired design.

The existing network of sales outlets can be reduced to a few selectively located showrooms. In these, customers can, for example, look at and touch the models and materials. The competent sales staff helps to create the customer profile, assists with the configuration and scans the feet. The generated data is then stored in the customer profile and is then available online for the customer.

For customers, this means a completely new and enhanced shopping experience. They can configure and order their own personal product at any time and from any location. This is then conveniently delivered to their home, e.g. by post. At the same time, this opens up a huge potential for information gain for suppliers, since the data and information stored by the customers can be used to create a new shopping experience.

online activities are stored and can be evaluated in a targeted manner. This allows, for example, future requirements to be derived, the corresponding raw materials to be ordered at an early stage and customers to be advertised in a targeted manner.

Another decisive advantage is the radically changed cash flow. With mass customization, customers pay for their shoes before they are produced. In addition, non-value-added warehousing and the associated costs are eliminated.

Industry 4.0 as a pioneer for mass customization
The developments of Industry 4.0 according to the current state of the art offer the opportunity to transfer solution approaches such as mass customization into reality and to implement them cost-effectively.

At the core of Industry 4.0 is the continuity of data and information flows across the entire value chain, which is a mandatory prerequisite for batch size 1 production. This also includes the continuous linking and ongoing synchronization of the data management systems used in the value chain.

Today, digital product development offers sophisticated methods and tools to offer customers many variants with fully defined generic product structures. For products, this means a high external diversity of variants (large selection for customers) with simultaneously low internal variance thanks to standardization and the modular structure of the products. The high variety for the customers is created by combining the product components or modules. To illustrate: For example, a shoe has five components, all of which are available in three different variants, so the internal variance is three times five (15) and the external variance is three to the power of five (243). In addition, the generic product structure has another decisive advantage: all parts lists, assembly plans, etc. of the associated variants (243 in the above example) are derived fully automatically, rule-based and only on demand from the generic structure, e.g. directly through the customer's configuration in the web shop.

Industry 4.0 enables fully automated control of customer-specific products through automated or partially automated production. In production, it is necessary to manufacture the components and modules according to the customer-specific dimensions and, if necessary, other specifications such as material selection, etc. The control code for automated production machines, such as CNC milling machines, is used for this. For this purpose, the control code for automated production machines such as CNC milling machines or 3D printers is defined and parameterized. The parameters affect all elements of the control code that are material- or customer-specific, i.e. depend on the selected material and/or the customer's masses. By configuring the customers, the machine control code is fully auto- matically complemented to the customer specifications. This means that variant-specific components can also be produced without additional effort, comparable to the mass production of standard products.

Throughout the entire production and subsequent assembly process, a continuous flow of information ensures that the correct components and modules are assigned to the correct customer and installed in the intended sequence. For this purpose, all individual parts must be marked and machine-identifiable. Today, there are many different and widespread solutions for all conceivable degrees of automation in production, ranging from manual picking and goods recognition with bar codes to fully automatic assembly and transfer to the assembly stations.

Proven examples
In the shoe industry, such a solution approach has already been successfully implemented several times. Two randomly selected examples are:

- myVALE: Flipflops with customised footbed based on footprint, customer-specific design by means of configuration (>35 million possibilities)

- Risch Shoes: Men's shoes made to measure with foot scan, customised design with configuration, show room with all the models in the collection.

Analog solution approaches can be implemented for the production of many other goods and bring corresponding advantages. It is worthwhile to use the possibilities of Industry 4.0, to develop and offer new business models. The associated opportunities and potential speak for themselves.