'Due to strong competition from Asian countries encountered recently, footwear and flooring Manufacturers hope to achieve a high quality product with new performance in order to stand-out from the vast range of products that are currently available on the market. Increasingly important factors with regard to both footwear (professional and for everyday use) and floorings are safety and comfort. Many injuries caused by slipping could be avoided if appropriate sole materials and tread were chosen. Instead, there continues to be many accidents in the work environment most of which, i.e. 44.2%, are caused by slipping, 41.4% by trips and 14.4% are sprains. Currently, sole manufacturers design their models to be anti-slip using basic design criteria, often relying on their intuition and previous experience. The problem resides in the lack of design tools that can be used in the conception of footwear, which would make prototyping much cheaper, quicker and more effective in creating an answer to the friction that the shoe would be subjected to when used. The availability of these tools would lead to a reduction in the design-production time of the footwear as well as a reduction in costs, as unnecessary costs could be avoided, such as those derived from amendments to sole moulds, materials used for the production of prototypes, slip resistance validation tests following prototyping. For this reason, the main objective of the project is to develop guidelines and specific software which could be used as a design tools for soles and floorings to optimise their performance in relation to slipping.'

The MY Wear project will develop a new generation of customised, green, safe, healthy and smart work wear and sport wear products for elderly, obese, diabetics and disabled. Therefore a specific reference framework will be set up based on an innovative data integration platform gathering consumers data, during both products orders and usage, for customisation and extended services providing comfort, safety and health related functionalities to the addressed target groups. Moreover, high tech solutions for the production processes of both smart textiles and customised footwear will be developed in the MY Wear project. Particularly a textile intrinsic communication layer will be designed and developed to provide garments and shoes sensing and monitoring capabilities. Furthermore, adaptive footwear production processes will be developed, based on advanced CAD-CAM tools and flexible robot cells and sole injection solutions, for the manufacturing of personalised shoes. New high performing and recyclable components for safe and healthy sport and work wear will be developed, as well as LCA and eco-design tools for the development of green consumer products.

Ongoing social and economic globalization processes will offer major challenges on the global market for consumer oriented manufacturing sectors. In particular, the shoes and gloves markets are expected to grow by more than 25% within the next 5 years, and the market niches for high value added shoes and gloves are expected to grow even faster. As a consequence there is today a unique opportunity for the European Footwear and Sport Industries to improve their competitiveness on such market segments. To face such a challenge the present project will develop a new engineering framework for both products & processes integrating: new technologies and devices to integrate the consumer in shoes and gloves conception, specification and design; innovative 3D knowledge based integrated design tools; micro and nano devices providing shoes and gloves with innovative sensing and actuating functionalities; innovative high-performing materials with self-adaptive capabilities; adaptive production processes and technologies; new bio-materials and clean production processes. The expected outcome of the proposed project will be an integrated technology framework for the engineering of fully personalised shoes and gloves based on a 3 to 5 days time-to-market criterion. Such a framework will be validated and assessed on pilot production lines, and new differentiated consumer-centred shoes and gloves will be delivered as fully engineered prototypes. Main objectives of present project proposal are to raise competitiveness of the European Footwear and Sport Industry on the shoes and gloves high value added global market niches, so giving the opportunity to many European companies along the considered value chains to grow by more than 25% in the next 5 years; and to improve consumers satisfaction and well being through differentiated, comfortable, safe, healthy, affordable and sustainable user centred high value added shoes and gloves.

Simulation can significantly improve the competitive position of manufacturing and engineering companies by reducing their costs and resulting in more efficient development, production, procurement, logistics or financial processes. However, the take-up of simulation software by SMEs has until now been low due to high barriers of entry that include hardware prices, licensing costs and technical expertise. The CloudSME project will develop a cloud-based, one-stop-shop solution that will significantly lower these barriers, provide a scalable platform for small or larger scale simulations, and enable the wider take-up of simulation technologies in manufacturing and engineering SME's. The CloudSME Simulation Platform will support end user SME's to utilise customised simulation applications in the form of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based provision. Moreover, simulation software service providers and consulting companies will have access to a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution that enables them to quickly assemble custom simulation solutions in the cloud for their clients. The CloudSME Simulation Platform will be built on existing and proven technologies provided by the project partners and partially developed in previous European projects. Building on existing technology will enable the project to deliver its results quickly. The project consortium includes experienced partners, incorporating 12 SME's, from cloud hardware and platform providers, to simulation software providers, end users and technology integrators. To guarantee greater impact of the developed solution, additional use-cases will be provided by a further 10 partners following an open call after the first year of the project. The CloudSME Simulation Platform will dramatically change the way in which manufacturing/engineering SME's utilise simulation solutions today, and will provide new business opportunities not only to end-user SME's, but also to simulation software and cloud service providers.A typical experimental scenario in the project is based around an insole design simulation program developed by one of the partners, used for designing tailored insoles for sports footwear and for people with foot problems. The end user company in the project has patented a method for scanning feet in 3D and the experiment will involve linking this to a cloud-based version of the simulation software to design insoles and simulate the interaction of feet and insoles. In turn, this design is loaded into a CNC machine to manufacture the insoles. The aim of the cooperation is to establish a portal through which scans can be uploaded to the cloud-based software service which then validates the scanned image to produce the design. The experiment will explore the extent to which the service supporting the lifecycle of tailored insole production can be achieved. This will immediately lead to extensions of the software for checking images within other industries unrelated to the footwear business.

Currently, sole manufacturers design their models to be anti-slip using basic design criteria, often relying on their intuition and previous experience. The problem resides in the lack of design tools that can be used in the conception of footwear, which will make prototyping much cheaper, quicker and more effective in creating an answer to the friction that the shoe will be subjected to when used. Because of this situation, ULTRAGRIP project (FP7-SME-2010-1.262413) has developed guidelines and specific software which can be used as design tools for soles and floorings to optimise their performance in relation to slipping. Two of the main results from ULTRAGRIP project are a slip behaviour predicting software (mathematical model), and guidelines for recommendations on improving products slip resistance.

Il progetto MAIND mira allo sviluppo di materiali a base polimerica innovativi e a ridotto impatto ambientale, e di tecnologie avanzate per l’industria manifatturiera e delle costruzioni e si propone di sviluppare competenze scientifiche che possano essere messe a disposizione dell’industria manifatturiera pugliese con ricadute anche a livello nazionale ed europeo. I settori di riferimento, oltre a quello delle Costruzioni, sono il Tessile-Abbigliamento-Calzaturiero, l’Arredo e il Lapideo.

PRODUZIONE CALZATURE ANTINFORTUNISTICHE NON IN GOMMA