New technologies for customizing products for people with special necessities: project FASHION-ABLE

Abstract

Mass-customization of wearable products are offered as a higher added value to the broad public and have to compete with ready-to-wear offer. However, people with specific requirements are not covered by the current mass-customised products. This is the case of the elderly, disabled, diabetic and obese population groups when wearing textiles, clothing, footwear and textile-based orthotic goods. Further, at present, available knowledge and flexibility of production equipment and machinery of small and medium-sized enterprises operating in these traditional industries (even those that already offer made-to-measure products to the mass public) is unable to respond to the individual needs among such heterogeneous groups. The FASHION-ABLE project has solved this problem with a comprehensive set of solutions.

Keywords:

• advanced manufacturing technology
• automated
• manufacturing systems
• CAD/CAM

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the European Commission for making this work possible. The authors also express their gratitude to the following companies that participated in the project: Calzamedi S.L; Douëlou N.V (Bivolino); BSN Medical GmbH; J.G. Knopf’s Sohn GmbH & Co. KG; Human Solutions GmbH; Italian Converter S.r.l and Athens Technology Center S.A.; The authors also express their gratitude to the following associations, which participated in the project: Spain: Plataforma Representativa Estatal de Discapacitados Físicos (PREDIF);Poland: Ogólnopolska Federacja Organizacji Osób Niesprawnych Ruchowo (OFOONR) and The European Apparel and Textile Confederation (EURATEX).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission [project number FP7.FoF.NMP.2011-4 Project 284 871] under FASHION-ABLE project (http://www.fashionable-project.eu/) Area: ‘High tech solutions in production […] for […] healthy consumer goods’.