A shoe design support module towards mass customization

The transition from mass production to mass customization has brought new “facts” in the way the different actors of the supply chain do business together. On this context, new business models are being developed and introduced. This work presents a shoe design support module addressing the requirements of the new models for involving more actors such as product and production engineers, suppliers, customers, retailers etc. in the shoe development process. This module fosters the early integration and close collaboration of these Groups of Interest. Furthermore, a novel performance calculation tool is introduced which supports the iterative, collaborative shoe design process by automatically deriving the cost and time values for the new developed shoe model based on the envisioned production processes and the current situation at the production site.