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Project context and objectives
With more than 26.000 companies and almost 400.000 employees footwear industry is still relevant in Europe. However the trend shows a clear decline on business figures; low cost countries are becoming an obvious threat for the future of the sector.
Fashion Footwear production is currently mainly handcrafted. Some manufacturing processes are assisted by specialized machinery (last manufacture, cementing, and cutting) and there exist highly automated lines in mass production of technical shoes (i.e. safety footwear). But most production is still handmade, being especially true in the case of high added value shoes production, where Europe maintains its leadership. The introduction of intelligent robotics will contribute to overcome the complexity in the automation of the processes of this industry that accounts for some of the shortest production runs to be found (eight pairs of shoes is the average order size). The main reasons that justify this lack of automation and extensive labour demand are:
Although some companies in this sector tried in the past to incorporate robotic solutions, they did not succeed in the objective except for specific operations related to the injection process, as stated before. ROBOFOOT is developing different solutions to facilitate the introduction of robotics in traditional footwear industry.
To achieve this general objective the 10 partners that compound the ROBOFOOT Consortium have identified the main requirements and selected those operations that have higher impact in the companies.
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