FORUM INTERNAZIONALEI N T E R N AT I O N A L FO R U M

18Ottobre / October

2011Fiera di Bologna

ASSOMAC SERVIZI srlP.O. Box 73 PTB - Via Matteotti, 4/a - 27029 VIGEVANO - PV - ITALYTel.: +39 0381 78883 - Fax: +39 0381 88602 - exhibition@assomac.it

INNOTECH

calzatura personalizzata, su misura e produzione direttacustomized and tailor-made shoes and direct production

PROGRAM

9,30 Registration

9.40 Welcome Address

10.00 INTRODUCTION (Gian Carlo CAINARCA - University of Genova)

KEYNOTE SPEECH

Product Customization, Personalization and Customer Centricity:

Market Opportunities and Future Developments

(Frank PILLER - RWTH Aachen University, Technology & Innovation Management Group at M.I.T.)

10.40 Coffee Break

10.50 ROUND TABLE (moderator Gian Carlo CAINARCA)

12.30 Open Discussion

13.00 CONCLUSION

Andrea CARIGNANO – SEAC02 CEO

Digital Visualization Technologies for Product Personalization - the Ermenigildo

Zegna Case

Sergio DULIO – ASSOMAC

The Role of Technology in Highly Flexible, Customized and One Off Production

Siavash MAHADAVI – Digital Forming CEO

Rapid Manufacturing: a New Industrial Revolution

Bas POSSEN - CustoMax CEO

Made to Measure and Personalized Shoes: Lessons Learnt and Experiences to Share

Program and Documentation

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Prof. Ing. Gian Carlo CAINARCA:

Ordinary Professor ‐ Department of University of Genova

1987: Doctorate of Science of Industrial Innovation (University of Padua).

1982: Degree in Nuclear Engineering (Polytechnic of Milan).

The scientific activity is developed mainly in the field of adoption and diffusion of

technological innovations, focusing on information technology and computer‐based

technologies. The issues addressed ranging from the study of the impact in the

international relations of the factory in the organizational implications of employment

and labor, and, in general terms, the development of human resources.

He is currently Director of DOGE.I (Interdepartmental Centre for Research in

Organizational and Managerial‐Economics Disciplines for Engineering), Faculty of

Engineering of the University of Genoa and member dell' AILG (Italian Association of

Engineering and Management), of AIEL (Italian Association of Labour Economists),

VAT (Association for the History and Business studies) and its scientific Committee and

member of the scientific Committee of the Organisation & Development magazine.

giancarlo.cainarca@unige.it

http://www.dist.unige.it/cainarca/

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KEYNOTE SPEECH

Product Customization, Personalization and Customer Centricity: Market Opportunities and Future Developments

Prof. Frank T. PILLER

Director of the Technology & Innovation Management Group at RWTH Aachen University, Germany

He also is a founding faculty member and co‐director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Before, he worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management (2004‐2007) and TUM Business School (1999‐2004). He graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany in 1999. His recent research focuses on innovation interfaces: How can organizations increase innovation success by designing and managing better interfaces within their organization and with external actors. This stream of research includes topics like value co‐creation between businesses and customers/users, strategies to increase the productivity of technical problem solving by open innovation, and models to cope with contingencies of the innovation process.

At RWTH Aachen, Frank Piller has established one of Europe's largest research groups on technology and innovation management, supported by grants from the European Commission, the DFG, BMBF, and other institutions. He has consulted and delivered executive workshops for many Dax30 and Fortune500 companies. As an investor, member of the Board of Directors or as a scientific adviser of several technology companies, he transfers his research into practice.

List of recent publications please refer to tim.rwth‐aachen.de/piller Press reports about the work of Frank Piller & the RWTH‐TIM group: http://www.tim.rwth‐aachen.de/index.php?menu=presse Direct contact: USA: +1 617 326 3748 | Europe: +49 163 605 0276 | Skype: masscustom | piller@iimcp.org

Web & Blog: tim.rwth‐aachen.de | open‐innovation.com | mass‐customization.blogs.com Office Address: RWTH Aachen Technology & Innovation Management Group Lehrstuhl TIM, Kackertstrasse 15, 52072 Aachen, Germany Tel +49 241 809 3577, Fax +49 241 809 2367 piller@tim.rwth‐aachen.de

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ABSTRACT Product Customization, Personalization and Customer Centricity: Market Opportunities and Future Developments Mass producers have traditionally offered a limited number of standard products because the cost of complexity make more tailored offerings too expensive. Of course, whenever customers are not getting exactly what they need, a business opportunity is created. Mass customization addresses this opportunity by leveraging complexity to drive rather than brake innovation.

We define mass customization as the development, production, marketing and delivery of affordable goods and services with enough variety that nearly everyone finds exactly what they want. But while companies like Dell, BMW or MyMuesli appear to have cracked the code, reality has been harsh for other organizations. Indeed, few firms are actually deploying mass customization beyond experimentation, and in many cases it has simply failed to deliver on its promises.

Let’s first try to understand what it takes to mass customize. While specific answers are clearly industry or product-dependent, a decade of studying mass customization has led us to three fundamental capabilities needed for a firm to mass customize: solution space development, robust value chain design and choice simplification.

Solution space development. First and foremost, a company seeking to adopt mass customization needs to understand the idiosyncratic needs of its customers. This is in stark contrast to the approach of a mass producer, which focuses on identifying “central tendencies” among its customers’ needs. Indeed, a mass customizer needs to identify the product attributes along which customer needs most diverge. Once this is understood, the firm needs to clearly define its solution space: what it is going to offer and the dimensions along which the offering can be configured to meet individual customer needs.

Robust process design. It is crucial that increased variability in customers’ requirements does not lead to significant deterioration in the firm’s operations and supply chain. This can be achieved through a robust value chain design in which customized solutions can be delivered with near mass production efficiency and reliability.

Choice navigation. Finally, the firm must be able to support customers in identifying their own solutions, while minimizing complexity and burden of choice. When a customer is exposed to too many choices, the cognitive cost of evaluation can easily outweigh the increased utility of having more choices. This is the “paradox of choice”: Having too many choices actually reduces customer value, instead of increasing it. As such, offering more product choices can lead customers to postpone or suspend their purchases, and, even more worryingly, to classify the seller as difficult to deal with and hence undesirable.

Our experience with companies in many industries revealed that many managers reject

mass customization on the simple basis that “it won’t work in my business.” This reaction results from a perception of mass customization as an ideal, unachievable state. However, we believe that pursuing it is akin to moving along a continuum whose limits are mass production and mass customization. Mass customization, viewed this way, is therefore a process rather than a destination. Small steps can produce big results, even if the organization remains far away from the “pure” ideal.

As no firm can become a perfect mass customizer, the real question for most companies revolves around how solution space development, robust value chain design and choice simplification capabilities can be improved rather than perfectly achieved. Every company can do this, and add to strategic differentiation in the process.

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Digital Visualization Technologies for Product Personalization

Dr. Andrea CARIGNANO:

Vice Chairman SeacO2 ‐ Turin, Italy 1998 graduated from the Polytechnic of Turin in engineering Aerospazionale 2003‐present: Co‐Founder and CEO Seac02 Ltd. 2007‐present: co‐founder 3Demotion s.r.l. 2008‐present CEO 3Demotion Ltd. 2006‐present Founder and member of the Board of Directors View conference Turin 2010‐now a founding member of Reseau Entraprendre Michelin Piedmont Participation in the Los Angeles Master UCLA MBA year 2004 and year 2008 Winner of: 2003 Winner of the Galileo Ferraris I3P 2004 Best Company for Unicredit 2005 Prize of the I3P Starup

2006 Startup of the year award at the National innovators

SeacO2 Via San Francesco D’Assisi 23 10121 TORINO andrea.carignano@seac02.it

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ABSTRACT Virtual and augmented reality for the management of multi-channel customer experience in tailor-made The use of virtual technologies can efficiently manage the activities of pre-sale and after sales activities of customized products. Technologies allow for virtual representations to show tailor-made products not yet built and configured to the same end user. It is production chain that starts from the CAD world textiles and shoes to minimize the costs of building a front end for sales and highest efficiency. 3D assets that are created digitally can be used in different channels automatically, with daily updates via cloud solutions. Particular importance is given in addition to user experience, guaranteeing to the consumer flexibility of customization offering, and the collection of analytical data on consumer preferences. These data add value ad value to companies which can "trace" consumer preferences and habits. The presentation will focused on technologies and will shown a scenario of possible future developments. Particular attention will be given to the opportunity presented by the multi-channel, from POS web to mobile. Case histories will present in the world of fashion footwear.

http://www.seac02.it/

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The Role of Technology in Highly Flexible,

Customized and One Off Production Ing. Sergio DULIO:

Technology footwear expert ASSOMAC , Vigevano Italy He spent the first years of his professional career in the aerospace industry, working abroad (Switzerland) and in Italy In 1984 he joins IBM as a member of the first technical support team to the 3D CAD / CAM application CATIA; in the years spent with IBM he participates in many different projects aimed at the introduction of CAD / CAM technologies at various prestigious companies, like Ferrari, Fiat Avio, Perini Navi and many others; he continues this experience in the digital world by funding, with other partners, one of the first Italian companies active in selling CAD / CAM services and systems. At the end of the eighties (1988) he has the initial contact with the footwear world; he starts by dealing with the introduction to the market of the first families of shoe specific CAD / CAM applications, and then as an expert in the area of leather cutting, as part of the technical staff of ATOM, one of the leading companies in the field of shoe machinery. Besides being responsible for the development of the new families of dieless automatic leather cutting systems and of their introduction in some important companies (like Gucci), he starts his experience in the coordination of European research projects by leading ALCUT, a EUREKA initiative aimed at developing a new generation of water jet leather cutting systems. In 1996 he is appointed director of SINTESI (a research consortium with the National Research Council ITIA – CNR and a group of shoe machinery producers among its members); in the next years he coordinates a very relevant three year research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Scientific Research, that leads to the development and installation of a highly automated shoe manufacturing pilot plant. In 2001 he is designated by ITIA (Institute of Industrial technologies and Automation of CNR) as Technical Coordinator of the EUROShoE project, one of the largest EU funded projects in the footwear field, with 33 partners and a total budget of 17 million €, aimed at the development of technologies for the design and manufacturing of customized shoes (Mass Customization paradigm). In 2003 he gets a contract with CNR – ITIA to organize, install and activate a Design and Mass Customization Laboratory in Vigevano, where a Pilot Plant for the production of customized shoes has been put in operation. He works as a technical consultant both for ASSOMAC (Association of shoe machinery producers), as a coordinator of international projects and of a technical initiative to develop a technical standard for data interchange between CAD systems and machines, as well as for ANCI (Italian association of footwear manufacturers) in the area of research and innovation.

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ABSTRACT

The role of technology in highly flexible, customized, one off productions

The production of customized goods (shoes in our case) poses the highest challenges to the manufacturing system in terms of basic technologies, process organization, monitoring and control, planning and scheduling. It isn’t only a matter of being technically capable of producing the high variety of different models and styles, with the utmost variability that is typical of MTO and customized products, but to perform this task maintaining process efficiencies that approach those ones typical of mass production. This is in fact the goal: keeping manufacturing costs as low as possible so that the extra price the end consumer is due to pay is minimum or, possibly, zero. Achieving these goals will eventually foster the advent of what we can call “real shoe mass customization”. In order to obtain that, some technological elements must be carefully selected and implemented; firstly a digital approach in the design of the shoe models and in the generation of all the necessary information to initiate the manufacturing process. A CAD model of the shoe and of all its variants generates a wealth of data that can be used both to plan the subsequent manufacturing phases and to control the machines. Accurate and complete CAD models become essential when a totally bespoke shoe is to be produced. Secondly highly flexible and automated machines are needed for all the most important steps of the production process, depending on the kind of construction adopted for the shoes. Programmability, high efficiency and a capability to automatically recall and execute the appropriate programs by identifying electronically the shoe to be produced are mandatory requirements for these machines. And finally a high level of process control, monitoring of the work in progress and tracking of each single order through the manufacturing process are again key aspects for a successful implementation ; this is true in particular when men and machines have to cooperate in a highly demanding scenario of this kind. This also has an impact on the work organization models and on their integration with the more technological aspects of the production process to be created. Machines and machine integration, software to control and monitor the manufacturing process, tracking systems and workflow organization actually define the “perimeter” of a “production system” with well defined performance, standards and capabilities that , in satisfying the highly demanding needs of one off, customized shoe production, can also move forward footwear manufacturing in general terms.

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Rapid Manufacturing: a New Industrial Revolution

Dr. Siavash MAHADAVI:

CEO Digital Forming, London‐ UK

During his PhD in Evolutionary Robotics, Siavash Mahdavi developed software that was able to design complex lattice structures which could be manufactured through additive manufacturing (more commonly known as 3D Printing). He established Within Technologies, a software house that specialises in the development of software for the medical and aerospace industries in 2008. This technology has been used in the aerospace sector to design lightweight yet strong components while in the medical sector, other software has resulted in the design and manufacture of complex porous structures that are ideally suited to bone in‐growth into orthopedic implants. In 2008 he also launched Digital Forming, a company that is making use of 3D printing to enable the mass customisation of consumer products for high‐street brands. Both companies were recently featured in the Economist in a cover story entitled "The manufacturing technology that will change the world".

Program and Documentation

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Abstract

Rapid manufacturing a new industrial revolution

During this lecture, Siavash Mahdavi will cover the state of the art in additive manufacturing whilst diving into some exciting applications of this revolutionary design and manufacturing technique in footwear. He will also discuss the role of mass customisation of consumer products through new advances in software that will also open up consumers to becoming co-designers.

http://www.digitalforming.com

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Made to Measure and Personalized Shoes: Lessons Learnt and Experience to Share

Dr. Bas POSSEN:

CEO Customax, Amsterdam‐ The Netherlands Bas Possen is (co‐)founder of a number of companies in the field of mass customization and has been working in this area for more than a decade. He currently is chief executive officer of Possen Made‐to‐Fit Fashion and CustoMax.

Possen Made‐to‐Fit Fashion is the largest retailer in The Netherlands for mass customized business wear for ladies and gentlemen. In 1999 the company launched the world‐first fashion application of 2D and 3D body scanners in three pilot stores in The Netherlands as well as a ‘mobile store’, a truck with a body scanner, sales room and coffee corner visiting corporate clients. After this launch many thousands of customers have been served with mass customized fashion items.

CustoMax is Europe’s largest mass customization network in fashion connecting both online and offline consumers, retailers, multiple vendors of custom goods and their providers of fabrics and additional materials on one single web based portal.

CustoMax offers a complete ecosystem around mass customization in apparel and is built on three fundaments for successful mass customization on a large scale:

1. One (online) market place for multiple vendors of customized fashion 2. Innovative end‐to‐end and integrated web based multi‐enterprise ERP system 3. Focus on distribution channels, user interfaces and marketing to end‐consumers

Both Possen Made‐to‐Fit Fashion and CustoMax are supported by the European Community and have been or are lead partners in projects funded by the European Commission researching innovative mass customization concepts. The companies are often referred to in case studies and research on mass customization and Bas Possen delivered executive workshops in this field, amongst others for the University of California at Irvine and the MIT Sloan School of Management in Boston, USA.

Bas Possen comes from a family of fashion retailers and graduated in economics & business administration at the University of Maastricht in 1995, followed by a post‐graduate degree in auditing and accounting obtained in 1997.

For almost six years (1994 – 1999) he worked as an international auditor and consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers based in Amsterdam. In this period he advised medium to large national and international clients in Europe and the United States, building expertise in the areas of high‐tech (telecom, media, and e‐commerce) and financial services (banking and insurance). During this period he also participated in a masters program for corporate treasury and finance at the London Business School in 1998 and 1999.

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Abstract

Title: How to run a successful MC shoe business?

… about operational excellence, flexibility, happy customers and many, many orders!

Highlights:

• A decade of mass customization in the fashion and lifestyle industry; from being laughed at to a charming little concept for a niche market to a mass volume market and a new outlook for the European fashion and lifestyle industry.

• Critical factor for success: the mindset of an industry (“no” is not an option). • Other basic conditions for MC success:

o People that truly understand mass customization and what it takes. o Well equipped and connected production facilities and material providers. o A connected supply chain ensuring logistical reliability (one-piece flow logistics in

a networked real-time infrastructure). o Attractive and fashionable product offerings. o Short delivery times. o Strong price points for each market segment (price competitiveness).

• Conditions that make the difference:

o Easy-to-use consumer interfaces for multi-product ordering (e.g. shoes, shirts, jeans, etc) in a multi-channel environment (e.g. in-store, web-store).

o Cool and sexy ordering features for each interface (e.g. 3D configuration, style advice tools, virtual try-on).

o Enhancing customer loyalty (e.g. fast and easy repeat orders, personalized offers, social media tools, group shopping).

• Business models around customer centric eco systems – an important role for new

intermediaries.

• Successful examples from the fashion industry. • Cases of sneaker companies (Keds, Nike, Adidas) – focus on visualization. • Case of THE LEFT SHOE COMPANY – focus on innovation and fit. • Case of Fratelli Borgioli – focus on design, quality and fit. Summary: Lessons learned from a decade of mass customization business in the fashion and lifestyle industry and how they specifically might be applied to the footwear industry.

"In general, too little use is made of the advantage, that all people are different."

bas.possen@customax.com +31 20 408 48 87 (office) +31 6 536 111 78 (direct) www.customax.com

Pilotenstraat 56 1059 CR Amsterdam The Netherlands

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Technology

Print me a Stradivarius How a new manufacturing technology will change the world

THE industrial revolution of the late 18th century made possible the mass production of goods, thereby creating economies of scale which changed the economy—and society—in ways that nobody could have imagined at the time. Now a new manufacturing technology has emerged which does the opposite. Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did.

It works like this. First you call up a blueprint on your computer screen and tinker with its shape and colour where necessary. Then you press print. A machine nearby whirrs into life and builds up the object gradually, either by depositing material from a nozzle, or by selectively solidifying a thin layer of plastic or metal dust using tiny drops of glue or a tightly focused beam. Products are thus built up by progressively adding material, one layer at a time: hence the technology’s other name, additive manufacturing. Eventually the object in question—a spare part for your car, a lampshade, a violin—pops out. The beauty of the technology is that it does not need to happen in a factory. Small items can be made by a machine like a desktop printer, in the corner of an office, a shop or even a house; big items—bicycle frames, panels for cars, aircraft parts—need a larger machine, and a bit more space.

At the moment the process is possible only with certain materials (plastics, resins and metals) and with a precision of around a tenth of a millimetre. As with computing in the late 1970s, it is currently the preserve of hobbyists and workers in a few

academic and industrial niches. But like computing before it, 3D printing is spreading fast as the technology improves and costs fall. A basic 3D printer, also known as a fabricator or “fabber”, now costs less than a laser printer did in 1985.

Just press print

The additive approach to manufacturing has several big advantages over the conventional one. It cuts costs by getting rid of production lines. It reduces waste enormously, requiring as little as one-tenth of the amount of material. It allows the creation of parts in shapes that conventional techniques cannot achieve, resulting in new, much more efficient designs in aircraft wings or heat exchangers, for example. It enables the production of a single item quickly and cheaply—and then another one after the design has been refined.

For many years 3D printers were used in this way for prototyping, mainly in the aerospace, medical and automotive industries. Once a design was finalised, a production line would be set up and parts would be manufactured and assembled using conventional methods. But 3D printing has now improved to the point that it is starting to be used to produce the finished items themselves (see article). It is already competitive with plastic injection-moulding for runs of around 1,000 items, and this figure will rise as the technology matures. And because each item is created individually, rather than from a single mould, each can be made slightly differently at almost no extra cost. Mass production could, in short, give way to mass customisation for all kinds of products, from shoes to spectacles to kitchenware.

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By reducing the barriers to entry for manufacturing, 3D printing should also promote innovation. If you can design a shape on a computer, you can turn it into an object. You can print a dozen, see if there is a market for them, and print 50 more if there is, modifying the design using feedback from early users. This will be a boon to inventors and start-ups, because trying out new products will become less risky and expensive. And just as open-source programmers collaborate by sharing software code, engineers are already starting to collaborate on open-source designs for objects and hardware.

The jobless technology

A technological change so profound will reset the economics of manufacturing. Some believe it will decentralise the business completely, reversing the urbanisation that accompanies industrialisation. There will be no need for factories, goes the logic, when every village has a fabricator that can produce items when needed. Up to a point, perhaps. But the economic and social benefits of cities (see article) go far beyond their ability to attract workers to man assembly lines.

Others maintain that, by reducing the need for factory workers, 3D printing will undermine the advantage of low-cost, low-wage countries and thus repatriate manufacturing capacity to the rich world. It might; but Asian manufacturers are just as well placed as anyone else to adopt the technology. And even if 3D printing does bring manufacturing back to developed countries, it may not create many jobs, since it is less labour-

intensive than standard manufacturing.

The technology will have implications not just for the distribution of capital and jobs, but also for intellectual-property (IP) rules. When objects can be described in a digital file, they become much easier to copy and distribute—and, of course, to pirate. Just ask the music industry. When the blueprints for a new toy, or a designer shoe, escape onto the internet, the chances that the owner of the IP will lose out are greater.

There are sure to be calls for restrictions on the use of 3D printers, and lawsuits about how existing IP laws should be applied. As with open-source software, new non-commercial models will emerge. It is unclear whether 3D printing requires existing rules to be tightened (which could hamper innovation) or loosened (which could encourage piracy). The lawyers are, no doubt, rubbing their hands.

Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750—or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950—it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches. Companies, regulators and entrepreneurs should start thinking about it now. One thing, at least, seems clear: although 3D printing will create winners and losers in the short term, in the long run it will expand the realm of industry—and imagination.

from the print edition | Leaders - The Economist - Feb 10th 2011

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3D printing

The printed world Three-dimensional printing from digital designs will transform manufacturing and allow more people to start making things

FILTON, just outside Bristol, is where Britain’s fleet of Concorde supersonic airliners was built. In a building near a wind tunnel on the same sprawling site, something even more remarkable is being created. Little by little a machine is “printing” a complex titanium landing-gear bracket, about the size of a shoe, which normally would have to be laboriously hewn from a solid block of metal. Brackets are only the beginning. The researchers at Filton have a much bigger ambition: to print the entire wing of an airliner.

Far-fetched as this may seem, many other people are using three-dimensional printing technology to create similarly remarkable things. These include medical implants, jewellery, football boots designed for individual feet, lampshades, racing-car parts, solid-state batteries and customised mobile phones. Some are even making mechanical devices. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Peter Schmitt, a PhD student, has been printing something that resembles the workings of a grandfather clock. It took him a few attempts to get right, but eventually he removed the plastic clock from a 3D printer, hung it on the wall and pulled down the counterweight. It started ticking.

Engineers and designers have been using 3D printers for more than a decade, but mostly to make prototypes quickly and cheaply before they embark on the expensive business of tooling up a factory to produce the real thing. As 3D printers have become more capable and able to work with a broader range of materials, including production-grade plastics and metals, the machines are increasingly being used to make final products too. More than 20% of the output of 3D printers is now final products rather than prototypes, according to Terry Wohlers, who runs a research firm specialising in the field. He predicts that this will rise to 50% by 2020.

Using 3D printers as production tools has become

known in industry as “additive” manufacturing (as opposed to the old, “subtractive” business of cutting, drilling and bashing metal). The additive process requires less raw material and, because software drives 3D printers, each item can be made differently without costly retooling. The printers can also produce ready-made objects that require less assembly and things that traditional methods would struggle with—such as the glove pictured above, made by Within Technologies, a London company. It can be printed in nylon, stainless steel or titanium.

Click to manufacture

The printing of parts and products has the potential to transform manufacturing because it lowers the costs and risks. No longer does a producer have to make thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of items to recover his fixed costs. In a world where economies of scale do not matter any more, mass-manufacturing identical items may not be necessary or appropriate, especially as 3D printing allows for a great deal of customisation. Indeed, in the future some see consumers downloading products as they do digital music and printing them out at home, or at a local 3D production centre, having tweaked the designs to their own tastes. That is probably a faraway dream. Nevertheless, a new industrial revolution may be on the way.

Printing in 3D may seem bizarre. In fact it is similar to clicking on the print button on a computer screen and sending a digital file, say a letter, to an inkjet printer. The difference is that the “ink” in a 3D printer is a material which is deposited in successive, thin layers until a solid object emerges.

The layers are defined by software that takes a series of digital slices through a computer-aided design. Descriptions of the slices are then sent to the 3D printer to construct the respective layers.

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They are then put together in a number of ways. Powder can be spread onto a tray and then solidified in the required pattern with a squirt of a liquid binder or by sintering it with a laser or an electron beam. Some machines deposit filaments of molten plastic. However it is achieved, after each layer is complete the build tray is lowered by a fraction of a millimetre and the next layer is added.

And when you’re happy, click print The researchers at Filton began using 3D printers to produce prototype parts for wind-tunnel testing. The group is part of EADS Innovation Works, the research arm of EADS, a European defence and aerospace group best known for building Airbuses. Prototype parts tend to be very expensive to make as one-offs by conventional means. Because their 3D printers could do the job more efficiently, the researchers’ thoughts turned to manufacturing components directly.

Aircraft-makers have already replaced a lot of the metal in the structure of planes with lightweight carbon-fibre composites. But even a small airliner still contains several tonnes of costly aerospace-grade titanium. These parts have usually been machined from solid billets, which can result in 90% of the material being cut away. This swarf is no longer of any use for making aircraft.

To make the same part with additive manufacturing, EADS starts with a titanium powder. The firm’s 3D printers spread a layer about 20-30 microns (0.02-0.03mm) thick onto a tray where it is fused by lasers or an electron beam. Any surplus powder can be reused. Some objects may need a little machining to finish, but they still require only 10% of the raw material that would otherwise be needed. Moreover, the process uses less energy than a conventional factory. It is sometimes faster, too.

There are other important benefits. Most metal and plastic parts are designed to be manufactured, which means they can be clunky and contain material surplus to the part’s function but necessary for making it. This is not true of 3D printing. “You only put material where you need to have material,” says Andy Hawkins, lead

engineer on the EADS project. The parts his team is making are more svelte, even elegant. This is because without manufacturing constraints they can be better optimised for their purpose. Compared with a machined part, the printed one is some 60% lighter but still as sturdy.

Form follows function

Lightness is critical in making aircraft. A reduction of 1kg in the weight of an airliner will save around $3,000-worth of fuel a year and by the same token cut carbon-dioxide emissions. Additive manufacturing could thus help build greener aircraft—especially if all the 1,000 or so titanium parts in an airliner can be printed. Although the size of printable parts is limited for now by the size of 3D printers, the EADS group believes that bigger systems are possible, including one that could fit on the 35-metre-long gantry used to build composite airliner wings. This would allow titanium components to be printed directly onto the structure of the wing.

Many believe that the enhanced performance of additively manufactured items will be the most important factor in driving the technology forward. It certainly is for MIT’s Mr Schmitt, whose interest lies in “original machines”. These are devices not constructed from a collection of prefabricated parts, but created in a form that flows from the intention of the design. If that sounds a bit arty, it is: Mr Schmitt is a former art student from Germany who used to cadge time on factory lathes and milling machines to make mechanised sculptures. He is now working on novel servo mechanisms, the basic building blocks for robots. Custom-made servos cost many times the price of off-the-shelf ones. Mr Schmitt says it should be possible for a robot builder to specify what a servo needs to do, rather than how it needs to be made, and send that information to a 3D printer, and for the machine’s software to know how to produce it at a low cost. “This makes manufacturing more accessible,” says Mr Schmitt.

The idea of the 3D printer determining the form of the items it produces intrigues Neri Oxman, an architect and designer who heads a research group examining new ways to make things at MIT’s Media Lab. She is building a printer to explore how new designs could be produced. Dr Oxman believes the design and construction of objects could be transformed using principles inspired by nature, resulting in shapes that are impossible to build without additive manufacturing. She has made items from sculpture to body armour and is even looking at buildings, erected with computer-guided nozzles that deposit successive layers of concrete.

Some 3D systems allow the properties and internal structure of the material being printed to be varied. This year, for instance, Within

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Technologies expects to begin offering titanium medical implants with features that resemble bone. The company’s femur implant is dense where stiffness and strength is required, but it also has strong lattice structures which would encourage the growth of bone onto the implant. Such implants are more likely to stay put than conventional ones.

Working at such a fine level of internal detail allows the stiffness and flexibility of an object to be determined at any point, says Siavash Mahdavi, the chief executive of Within Technologies. Dr Mahdavi is working on other lattice structures, including aerodynamic body parts for racing cars and special insoles for a firm that hopes to make the world’s most comfortable stiletto-heeled shoes.

Digital Forming, a related company (where Dr Mahdavi is chief technology officer), uses 3D design software to help consumers customise mass-produced products. For example, it is offering a service to mobile-phone companies in which subscribers can go online to change the shape, colour and other features of the case of their new phone. The software keeps the user within the bounds of the achievable. Once the design is submitted the casing is printed. Lisa Harouni, the company’s managing director, says the process could be applied to almost any consumer product, from jewellery to furniture. “I don’t have any doubt that this technology will change the way we manufacture things,” she says.

Other services allow individuals to upload their own designs and have them printed. Shapeways, a New York-based firm spun out of Philips, a Dutch electronics company, last year, offers personalised 3D production, or “mass customisation”, as Peter Weijmarshausen, its chief executive, describes it. Shapeways prints more than 10,000 unique products every month from materials that range from stainless steel to glass, plastics and sandstone. Customers include individuals and shopkeepers, many ordering jewellery, gifts and gadgets to sell in their stores.

EOS, a German supplier of laser-sintering 3D printers, says they are already being used to make plastic and metal production parts by carmakers, aerospace firms and consumer-products companies. And by dentists: up to 450 dental crowns, each tailored for an individual patient, can be manufactured in one go in a day by a single machine, says EOS. Some craft producers of crowns would do well to manage a dozen a day. As an engineering exercise, EOS also printed the parts for a violin using a high-performance industrial polymer, had it assembled by a professional violin-maker and played by a concert violinist.

Both EOS and Stratasys, a company based in Minneapolis which makes 3D printers that employ plastic-deposition technology, use their own machines to print parts that are, in turn, used to build more printers. Stratasys is even trying to print a car, or at least the body of one, for Kor Ecologic, a company in Winnipeg, whose boss, Jim Kor, is developing an electric-hybrid vehicle called Urbee.

Jim Kor’s printed the model. Next, the car Making low-volume, high-value and customised components is all very well, but could additive manufacturing really compete with mass-production techniques that have been honed for over a century? Established techniques are unlikely to be swept away, but it is already clear that the factories of the future will have 3D printers working alongside milling machines, presses, foundries and plastic injection-moulding equipment, and taking on an increasing amount of the work done by those machines.

Morris Technologies, based in Cincinnati, was one of the first companies to invest heavily in additive manufacturing for the engineering and production services it offers to companies. Its first intention was to make prototypes quickly, but by 2007 the company says it realised “a new industry was being born” and so it set up another firm, Rapid Quality Manufacturing, to concentrate on the additive manufacturing of higher volumes of production parts. It says many small and medium-sized components can be turned from computer designs into production-quality metal parts in hours or days, against days or weeks using traditional processes. And the printers can build unattended, 24 hours a day.

Neil Hopkinson has no doubts that 3D printing will compete with mass manufacturing in many areas. His team at Loughborough University has invented a high-speed sintering system. It uses inkjet print-heads to deposit infra-red-absorbing ink on layers of polymer powder which are fused into solid shapes with infra-red heating. Among other projects, the group is examining the potential for making plastic buckles for Burton Snowboards, a leading American producer of winter-sports equipment. Such items are typically produced by plastic injection-moulding. Dr Hopkinson says his

6

process can make them for ten pence (16 cents) each, which is highly competitive with injection-moulding. Moreover, the designs could easily be changed without Burton incurring high retooling costs.

Predicting how quickly additive manufacturing will be taken up by industry is difficult, adds Dr Hopkinson. That is not necessarily because of the conservative nature of manufacturers, but rather because some processes have already moved surprisingly fast. Only a few years ago making decorative lampshades with 3D printers seemed to be a highly unlikely business, but it has become an industry with many competing firms and sales volumes in the thousands.

Dr Hopkinson thinks Loughborough’s process is already competitive with injection-moulding at production runs of around 1,000 items. With further development he expects that within five years it would be competitive in runs of tens if not hundreds of thousands. Once 3D printing machines are able to crank out products in such numbers, then more manufacturers will look to adopt the technology.

Will Sillar of Legerwood, a British firm of consultants, expects to see the emergence of what he calls the “digital production plant”: firms will no longer need so much capital tied up in tooling costs, work-in-progress and raw materials, he says. Moreover, the time to take a digital design from concept to production will drop, he believes, by as much as 50-80%. The ability to overcome production constraints and make new things will combine with improvements to the technology and greater mechanisation to make 3D printing more mainstream. “The market will come to the technology,” Mr Sillar says.

Some in the industry believe that the effect of 3D printing on manufacturing will be analogous to that of the inkjet printer on document printing. The written word became the printed word with the invention of movable-type printing by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. Printing presses became like mass-production machines, highly efficient at printing lots of copies of the same thing but not individual documents. The inkjet printer made that a lot easier, cheaper and more personal. Inkjet devices now perform a multitude of printing roles, from books on demand to labels and photographs, even though traditional presses still roll for large runs of books, newspapers and so on.

A customised future

How would this translate to manufacturing? Most obviously, it changes the economics of making customised components. If a company needs a specialised part, it may find it cheaper and quicker to have the part printed locally or even to print its own than to order one from a supplier a long way away. This is more likely when rapid design changes are needed.

Printing in 3D is not the preserve of the West: Chinese companies are adopting the technology too. Yet you might infer that some manufacturing will return to the West from cheap centres of production in China and elsewhere. This possibility was on the agenda of a conference organised by DHL last year. The threat to the logistics firm’s business is clear: why would a company airfreight an urgently needed spare part from abroad when it could print one where it is required?

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things. Instead of finding the money to set up a factory or asking a mass-producer at home (or in another country) to make something for you, 3D printers will offer a cheaper, less risky route to the market. An entrepreneur could run off one or two samples with a 3D printer to see if his idea works. He could make a few more to see if they sell, and take in design changes that buyers ask for. If things go really well, he could scale up—with conventional mass production or an enormous 3D print run.

This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers. But whoever gains most, revolution may not be too strong a word.

from the print edition | Briefing - The Economist - Feb 10th 2011

MANUFACTURING & MATERIALS INNOVATION WF

18

Shoe making is a fairly traditional business, despite the

new manufacturing technologies, widespread

changes in markets and evolutions in consumer

attitudes and preferences that have appeared over the years

and, in particular, more recently. Indeed, there have only

been a few truly radical changes in terms of manufacturing

approach or organisation and business models. The concept

of mass customisation (MC) is one of them and, potentially, a

most exciting one.

The idea first appeared in 1992 in a book by Joe Pine

called ‘Mass Customisation: the New Frontier in Business

Competition’. No one took any steps to turn it into a reality,

however, until the early years of the new millennium. At that

time CAD systems were at the top of their development,

process automation and flexibility were the key words in

shoe manufacturing and new technologies appeared to allow

the scanning of body parts in order to produce accurate

digital models of them. Since then, much has changed.

The huge EUROShoE project, funded by the European

Commission, explored market sensitivity to this new way of

selling and producing shoes, tackled the major technological

challenges that were on the way and demonstrated the

feasibility of a ‘consumer centric’ process flow from sale to

design and manufacturing. Books were written on the

specific topic of footwear and MC, while at every gathering of

the Mass Customisation and Personalisation Congress since

it began in 2011, there were sessions specifically dedicated to

it. Despite all that happened during those ten years, mass

customisation for footwear is not here yet.

CONSUMER CENTRICITYWhat exactly do we mean by mass customisation? There

are two basic parts to the concept: consumer centricity and

efficiency of production. One well known definition in fact

claims that it means manufacturing a product based on the

individual requirements of a specific customer with near

mass production efficiency and, therefore, at a cost little

different from that of a standard product. That is a serious

and challenging claim to make.

The consumer centricity aspect particularly refers to the

way in which consumers participate in the various processes

from design to manufacture of their shoes. In the case of a

IS MASS CUSTOMISATIONOF FOOTWEAR REALISTIC?SERGIO DULIO

personalised product, they certainly have a more active role

than would normally be the case with a mass produced one

and therefore expect to be the centre of attention. This,

however, no longer appears to be enough and Joe Pine has

revised his original theory on personalisation by introducing

two further concepts.

First, that of ‘experience’ to emphasise how the time

spent by a consumer in the store should be perceived and

remembered as a memorable experience that completes the

final feeling of owning a pair of shoes specifically designed

and made for them. Satisfying their interests and tastes is not

enough, the purchase needs to become an experience in

which the atmosphere, the manner in which it takes place,

the content (even in terms of entertainment) of the

technologies that are at work in the process, all play a

relevant role. Pine has refined this into a theory that speaks

of an actual new economy based on such an experience in

his book The Experience Economy: World is Theatre and

Every Business a Stage.

Second, today’s consumer also looks for authenticity in

the products purchased, involving transparency of content,

visibility of processes involved, obvious quality, total

attention to their individual needs and a desire for

uniqueness. This is the minimum threshold shoemakers have

to reach in order to truly capture the attention of customers

and, at this level, requires wide knowledge of their behaviour

and a total change in the way they deal with the end user.

Furthermore, it also calls for a dramatic change as to whom

they consider to be their customers: no longer retailers but

the end users of their products.

MC in fact re-establishes the consumer/producer

relationship that was lost as shoemaking developed from a

craft activity into an industrial one. This implies benefits and

drawbacks for both the consumer and the producer. The key

to success is to find the right balance whereby the benefits

surpass the drawbacks for both parties. The table above lists

the most important benefits and corresponding drawbacks

for both producer and consumer.

MC is also a structural transformation in the

consumer/producer relationship which not all companies

are prepared for. In many cases, the radical mind-shift

required let alone the investment in new organisation or

technologies involved frightens companies off. Having said

that, however, what might be a major obstacle for a well

established company could easily become a motivating

factor for newcomers and innovative start-ups to actually

base their business model on such an original approach.

EFFICIENCY OF PRODUCTIONThis is the second element that mass customisation relies

on. It is well known that individuality goes against economies

of scale, requiring highly flexible processes and organisations

capable of handling the diversity of every single order coming

in. In an industry predominantly geared to volume production,

maintaining low extra costs with batch sizes of one pair has

been the goal of research and development work by

universities and technology suppliers alike. Many of the major

technical stumbling blocks have now been resolved and

technologies are available that, if correctly applied, preserve

cost efficiency more or less independent of batch size. Despite

all this, two other factors still cause companies to hesitate.

Changing the way things are done and processes are

organised in traditional shoemaking companies is always a

19

BENEFITS OF MASS CUSTOMISATION DRAWBACKS OF MASS CUSTOMISATION

Greater individual satisfaction Consumer pays a higher priceEasier to find the product and size desired Consumer must wait for the productImproved comfort from better fitting shoes They don’t see, touch and feel the product Consumer talks to supplier Issues regarding ownership of biometric dataConsumer feels producer cares

Manufacture only what is already sold New negotiations with retailers requiredNo inventories at point of sale Process becomes more complex Reduced or no discounted sales Potentially higher product costsLess space needed so less costs for retailer Requires reorganisation of processesProducer knows its consumersGreater consumer satisfaction and fidelityHigher added value in the sold product

CO

NSU

MER

PRO

DU

CER

Choosing a shoe that both appeals and fits well can be adilemma.

IS MASS CUSTOMISATION OF FOOTWEAR REALISTIC?

WORLD FOOTWEAR MAY/JUNE 2011

difficult task. As briefly mentioned earlier, it is not just the

financial investment that may be required but very often the

change in mindset that moving from a rigid, batch-oriented

set-up to a highly responsive and flexible one entails. It

means switching from manufacturing chains to lean cells,

from analogical to digital process control, from a push to a

pull production model and, as we have said, change-over

costs are often considered to be too high.

The second impediment is the need for standard mass

production and one for customised products to coexist in the

same factory. This is especially true for conventional

companies that want to explore MC while, at the same time,

retaining their position in the traditional market which would

be a necessity in at least the early stages of any MC project.

The main problem they would face is how to run single unit

orders on the same production lines used for their standard

footwear, making sure that the first are delivered to customer

specification and on time, while not disturbing the on-going

output of the second. Whilst an existing dedicated sample

line would certainly help, the typical short and frequent

development cycle for new products and collections might

not leave sufficient spare capacity.

A combination of these two factors has created

something of a deadlock and is the main reason mass

customisation has not spread in the footwear industry.

Traditional companies with an established market access,

solid product positioning and, moreover, an adequate

production capacity, are reluctant to take on the additional

costs of a change to MC. New entrants and start-ups on the

other hand which realise the possible potential and are

already geared to operate in a consumer centric scenario,

lack the manufacturing capacity to serve their customers and

struggle to find suppliers willing and able to support them.

FUTURE OF PRODUCTSA study by the Forrester Group in March of this year

contains an interesting survey on the subject of whether MC

can really be considered as the ‘future of products’. It

contains examples and case studies leading to a set of

recommendations for companies on how to use MC in order

to pursue customer centric strategies. Although not all the

contents of the study are directly applicable to the footwear

industry, it does contain a valuable set of definitions to

highlight how MC differentiates from mass production.

• Product features are identified by individual customers

• Product design carried out at point of sale by individuals

• Market presentation allows individual choice options

• Variations come from individual customers ideas

• Customer needs are defined by individuals within defined

boundaries

• Customer involvement occurs at point of sale

A word of warning however: identifying the specific

features and design of footwear by customers is a very

delicate issue due to the complexity of the task and the high

skill required to perform it in a consistent manner.

Nevertheless, the potential of allowing an end user to ‘play’

with the design or, at least, certain predefined elements in

order to add uniqueness to their customisation remains

almost totally unexplored. It could in fact become a powerful

lever for a widespread, consumer-pushed adoption of MC. A

lack of appropriate end user oriented design tools and

determination on the part of shoe manufacturers has, until

now, relegated it to a mere vision for the future.

CURRENT POSITIONAs things stand, the state of adoption of MC for footwear is

clearly shown in Figure 1. The typical price/market size pyramid

is set against a ‘customisation level’ that mainly refers to how

much of a shoe is actually designed and manufactured to the

individual requirements of the end user. At the low end of the

scale are mass produced shoes with no degree of customisation.

At the highest end we have fully bespoke footwear for which all

the elements of the shoe and, in particular the last, follow the

biometric data of the customer’s feet and their aesthetic

requirements. Between these two extremes, we have shoes

aesthetically personalised that are closer to the lower end as foot

20

Figure 1 – Current market for MC footwear.

CREDIT: SERGIO DULIO

22

biometrics are totally ignored. Towards the upper end, we find

best matched-fit shoes where aesthetic customisation is

combined with foot and last dimensional data matching so that

the closest available fit is provided.

We can see from all this that the highest level of

customisation is typically offered by a new generation of hand-

shoemakers, whom we can call ‘digital cobblers’ and who use

modern digital technology to produce truly bespoke shoes at

prices of €1,000 ($1,500) or more. It is therefore clear that at the

apex of the triangle there will only be a few wealthy customers.

A little lower down, we find the ‘affordable luxury’ category

where the level of customisation offered is lower (typically best

matched fit and aesthetics), as is a selling price which a

relatively larger number of consumers can afford. A recent

study conducted by a team of students at the Polytechnic of

Milan School of Management indicated that if the price of MC

shoes stayed between €400 ($580) and €600 ($940), almost

17% of those interviewed would buy customised shoes.

Significantly, their average age was between 40 and 55.

The vast majority of consumers at the base of the triangle

buying at up to €150 ($220) per pair are either totally excluded

or have to live with low levels of customisation typically

centred on a choice of colours, materials and aesthetic details,

but without any of the benefits in terms of fit and comfort

typical of the higher levels.

It is worth noting that major sports shoe brands including

Nike, adidas, Reebok and Asics are there, together with some

less-known but very active start-ups. Big brands such as these

certainly have the potential to boost MC. However, although it

is almost impossible to obtain reliable sales figures, those that

they currently generate through customised offerings must be

well below full potential and justify our initial statement that

the mass market remains largely untouched by MC and its very

real benefits of fit and comfort.

What all these cases have in common and also represents

probably the most relevant differentiation factor with regard to

mass production is that whatever the level of customisation,

all these shoes are strictly made to order; they are neither in

the shop or even in stock at the factory until the client chooses

the one he likes and places an order. A great challenge for the

vendor but a major advantage, as we will see, from other

standpoints.

A KEY QUESTIONThis, brings us back to the question as to how MC can

reach a mass market in order to offer the greatest possible

benefit to the highest number of consumers? There are two

ways in which this might happen: ‘democratisation’ and ‘long

tail effect’.

Democratisation refers to a situation in which a greater

number of big brands, beyond just the sports shoe sector,

move to MC and exploit it at various levels to lower the cost

of customised products such that the concept reaches as far

as possible down the economic value chain. In order to

assess how realistic this possibility might be, we must

consider several factors, the first being the market. Does one

exist for this kind of product/service combination and, if so,

how big is it? Strangely enough there are no recent

quantitative studies on this subject. The only specific data

was gathered during the EUROShoE project in 2001. This

suggested the ‘20/20/20 rule’, namely that if the end price of

customised shoes could be held to within 20% more than the

price for a normal pair of the same shoes and delivery time

was no more than 20 days, almost 20% of consumers

questioned would be prepared to buy them.

The numbers would need to be updated and might now

be possibly even more favourable. Converting this into

actual pairage potential and revenues achieved bearing in

mind the higher selling price and higher margins for

producers could then yield a volume in excess of 100

million pairs per year, worth well over $14 billion for

Europe alone. While this is an educated guess, it is still

appealing enough to warrant further consideration.Many bespoke shoemakers use digital technology.CREDIT: CALZOLERIA RIVOLTA – MILAN

Modern laser foot scanners are accurate and consistent.CREDIT: CALZOLERIA RIVOLTA – MILAN

WORLD FOOTWEAR MAY/JUNE 2011

IS MASS CUSTOMISATION OF FOOTWEAR REALISTIC?

23

The second point is better foot measurement. For the

concept of selling shoes based on the true biometric data of

the individual customer to spread to a mass market, low

cost, consistent and easy to use foot measuring

technologies must become widely available to the public.

Modern foot scanning machines are technically almost

perfect. What is missing is a way to make them available in

every shoe store or wherever a convenient Internet

connection is available such that anyone can go and have

their feet measured.

It is an intriguing scenario that lends itself to a series of

additional considerations that would be worth an in-depth

discussion for which is no room here. While it cannot be

said that this possibility is really around the corner,

movements in its direction are evident. The combined

effect of market appreciation and a widespread availability

of foot measurement systems could be a trigger for brands

to move towards MC and bring its potential benefits to the

mass market.

The long tail effect is discussed in a book by Chris

Anderson and can be summarised as a situation in which

the combined value of all the millions of items sold in only

small quantities equals or exceeds that of the few sold in

millions. So, could it come about that the niche markets in

which customised footwear is found today–such as formal

men’s shoes, casual men’s and women’s, trendy women’s

shoes and various specialist sports shoes–grow in number

such that variety and pairage sold increased to a point

where it rivalled mass produced footwear? It would be

worth carefully analysing these various niches as there is a

feeling that potential numbers might be more than

expected and that this growth could turn out to be more

than mere anticipation.

THE ENVIRONMENTA final and, perhaps unexpected, benefit that could

arise from the mass adoption of MC and footwear is its

impact on the environment. In the final chapter of 'Mass

Customisation and Footwear Myth, Salvation or Reality'

published by Springer in 2007, the authors could only

make a relatively short analysis of the energy wasted

every year in shoes unsold, cancelled, destroyed and

transported from faraway manufacturing units to their

final destination markets.

The topic was recently revisited by a doctorate student

in Europe, who found some very interesting comparisons

between mass produced and customised footwear in terms

of energy usage and carbon footprint. Anyone reading the

numbers would be surprised at the amount of energy that

could be saved and emissions reduced if we only produced

what consumers really wanted and in the right quantity.

Moreover, short supply chains and production plants close

to destination markets would also have a positive impact on

the overall carbon footprint of the entire process. A

widespread awareness of such a situation could perhaps

become the single most powerful driver for a new era of MC

in footwear.

1

FINAL PROGRAM

The 2011 World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation (MCPC 2011) Business Seminar, November 16-17, 2011 Innovation & Research Conference, November 17-19, 2011 Conference Venue: San Francisco Airport Marriot Hotel & Conference Center Conference Host: Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, University of California, Berkeley mcpc2011.com | twitter: #mcpc2011

The MCPC Conference consists out of two program elements:

• The "Research and Innovation Conference" is a research and application-focused interactive forum. Presentations are organized in parallel track and provide an in-depth discussion of all topics of the conference theme. Special showcase sessions and showcase symposia offer a focused perspective on themes and talks especially relevant for management practitioners.

• The "Business Seminar" provides an innovative platform for managers doing mass customization and open innovation as the core of their business. The seminar's foremost idea is to connect managers in peer-to-peer interaction to foster an intense discussion, facilitated by presentations from industry leaders and the seminar faculty. Host: Academic Co-Sponsors:

Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation

MIT Smart Customization Group

Technology & Innovation Management Group

Advanced Manufacturing Institute

Sponsors and Partners of the MCPC 2011