Mass Customization and Footwear: Myth, Salvation or Reality?

Mass customization is an emerging paradigm gathering growing interest in many industrial fields. The EUROShoE project (financed by the EC) explored the applicability of and developed technologies for the adoption of such a paradigm in the footwear business. The research showed the benefits for shoe companies of switching to the new business models and heled develop many of the enabling technologies that adopting the new paradigm appears to have.

This is the only book dedicated to the application of mass customization in a particular industry. Based on the EUROShoE project, it is a detailed analysis of the most relevant case studies of early mass customizers in the footwear sector, highlighting reasons for their failure or success. Both the technological aspects and the business aspects of mass customization, together with some relevant economic indicators are discussed.

This book will interest both practitioners in the footwear sector, and postgraduates, researchers and lecturers in mass customization.

Professor Claudio Boer has 16 years experience in industry, mainly in the area of computer integrated design and manufacturing, and another 16 years experience as a researcher and professor of industrial technology and innovation. He also has experience as the leader of large research projects at national, European and international levels, particularly in the area of manufacturing innovation and management. He was Project Leader of the EUROShoE project managing 34 international partners. He is currently Director of the Institute for Computer Integrated Manufacturing for Sustainable Innovation (ICIMSI) in Lugano, Switzerland.

Sergio Dulio has almost twenty years of experience in the footwear sector, including 10 years involvement in research projects. His main focus of research is mass customization and footwear. He graduated, magna cum laude, in aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan in 1981 and went on to specialize in fluid dynamics attending a master course at an important NATO funded research institute in Belgium. In 2003 he was appointed by CNR – ITIA to organize, install and activate a Design and Mass Customization Laboratory in Vigevano, Italy, where a pilot plant for the production of customized shoes was put into operation. The pilot plant was managed as a real shoe factory, using the technologies developed in the EUROShoE project and manufacturing a few hundreds pairs of personalized shoes. This task was completed at the end of 2004. He was also the Technical Project Manager of an even larger footwear research project funded by the EU (the CECmadeShoe project, involving 54 partners and a budget of 21 million Euros) aimed at the development of new materials, processes and product concepts for footwear in the new century. Sergio Dulio, works as a high-level technical consultant, both for ANCI (the Italian Association of Footwear Manufacturers) and ASSOMAC (the Italian Association of shoe machinery producers) with the task ofsupporting these two organizations in the formulation and activation of their strategic plans in the areas of technological research and innovation. He is also an independent consultant in the field of mass customization in footwear, supporting shoe manufacturers and retailers in their strategies for the introduction of MC in their business.