Automation can help eliminate defects in performance footwear
18/11/2016
He explained at an event to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the company’s fabric division that the high number of steps involved in making shoes at the moment and the large number of hands each product can pass through increase the possibility for error.
He said that, in his opinion, increasing use of automation can help reduce these errors and, therefore, reduce the number of defects in shoes that consumers buy for their waterproof, breathable functionality.
“This is still quite a traditional industry,” Mr Smith explained. “Typically, a shoe with Gore-Tex goes through 138 different steps in production. This makes mistakes and even damage to the membrane material possible. But automation is making more and more inroads, as we have seen in recent developments at Reebok, Nike, adidas, Under Armour and so on. It’s my view that if the automated process is set up correctly it should make it easier for problems of this kind to be eliminated.”
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