Comfort Environmental and Custom (CEC) Made Shoes

Start - Finish:

2004-2007

Research Conducted by:

T. Staikos S. Rahimifard

Keywords:

Shoes, Cost-benefit analysis, Decision support tool, End-of-Life, Reuse/Recycling of shoes

Industrial collaborators:

European Confederation of the Footwear Industry
Institute of Industrial Technologies and Automation
BFA - British Footwear Association
DELCAM plc
BASF AG
A full list can be found at...

Aims & Objectives:

This research aims to facilitate the development of a systematic and economical procedure for End-of-Life Management in shoe manufacturing. The project aims to develop an “End-of-Life Design Decision Making Tool” by combining two major actions:

1. Development of a Knowledge based Reference Model for shoe End-of-Life decision making.

2. Development of a Cost Benefit Analysis Model for the End-of-Life management of shoes.

Brief Description

End-of-Life Management of shoes is becoming a major concern for the footwear industry due to legislative and producer responsibility issues as well as increasingly consumer pressure. Around 13 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide per year, with most of these shoes disposed off in landfills. At present shoe recycling and product recovery activities are very limited in the European and Global Footwear market. This problem has been significantly augmented in recent years due to the ever-changing fashion trends in shoe industry which has resulted in a very short ‘use life cycle' for shoes.

One of the radical innovations proposed by the SMART Centre at Loughborough University is a holistic view of implementation of various shoe recovery and recycling options:

1) Shoe recovery, which is the reintroduction of the used shoe back into the market through a series of processes such as inspection, repair and polishing,

2) Part recovery, where a uppers, soles and grindery of used shoes can be recovered, and re-conditioned for re-use in production of new shoes,

3) Material recovery, is retrieving the material content of the whole or a subset of the components of used shoe through a range of processes at the end of which the identity of the shoe is completely lost, and finally

4) Energy recovery, where in limited applications some of the material not recovered through one of aforementioned processes is used to generate energy and other useful by products.

There are two major research activities to support the development of the “End-of-Life Design Decision Making Tool”:

1. Development of knowledge based reference model for shoe EoL decision making

It is intended to utilise a systematic method of identifying all these factors and their influences, and use a knowledge based reference model to support the decision making related to the adoption of the most suitable recovery and recycling options for a selected range of shoe types/styles.

2. Development of cost benefit analysis model for EoL Management of Shoes

The business and economical drivers will significantly vary in sectors such as children’s shoes, fashion shoes, sport footwear, orthopaedic shoes, and special purposed shoes. Therefore to be able to justify the adoption of the most appropriate recovery and recycling options, there is need to develop a clear understanding of these drivers, and to undertake an evaluation and assessment of contributing factors which are commonly used as decision indicators within shoe manufacturing companies.

The “End-of-Life Design Decision Making Tool” will be developed with an appropriate user interface environment as illustrated in the following figure.