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Original Articles

Moving from mass customization to social manufacturing: a footwear industry case study

, , , , , , & show all
Pages 194-205 | Received 30 Mar 2018, Accepted 12 Nov 2018, Published online: 21 Dec 2018
 

ABSTRACT

A social manufacturing (SM) system for the footwear industry is proposed to improve customisation accuracy and efficiency through the use of big data and crowdsourcing. SM is a novel manufacturing paradigm for distributed, collaborative, service-oriented, crowdsourcing-based, intelligent, and customised footwear production. First, the definition and process of footwear SM are introduced. Next, key supporting technologies are discussed, including 3D scanning, an evaluation mechanism for supply–demand matching, and optimised allocation of socialised manufacturing resources. Finally, the system development and an application case are described. In SM, a prosumer is defined as someone who is both a producer and consumer at the same time, and can be involved in the full life cycle of a personalised product, including the design, manufacture, service, and consumption processes. This allows the experience of every prosumer to be enhanced through participation, potential demands for personalised product to be released, and the production efficiency of customisation to be improved.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [61304201, 61533019, 61773381, 61773382, 71702182].

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