DIVERSIFICATION OF A SAFETY FOOTWEAR PRODUCT

Abstract

Product diversification is a usual strategy of footwear producers. As a requirement related to competitiveness in this domain, diversification can be done by practical application of some criteria. Considering this aspect, the paper proposes a research on the diversification in the case of a safety footwear product by modifying its component patterns, while keeping the initial shape of the product. Thus, starting from a safety shoe model, diversification was performed by changing the configuration in the joining area of two patterns of the product. By joining the tongue with the bellows tongue, the upper with the quarter, the heel counter with the quarter and the collar and heel counter with quarter has resulted a family of models characterized by a reduction of the number of patterns in the product. The size of the set presents a significant influence on the theoretical nesting factor and implicitly on the size of the wastes. The analysis of the resulting new model types lead to highlighting the influence of the patterns number of the uppers and the area of the set on the usage index of the leather surface when cutting the parts and on the specific consumption.

Keywords

• manufacturing
• footwear
• nesting factor
• waste
• usageindex
• specific consumption