Design of customer driven shoes and multisite factory - DOROTHY

European Shoe Manufacturing faces an intense and growing competitive pressure brought forth by developing countries, which are entering the global market offering low-cost workforce for the production of labour-intensive, low value added products. Moreover, these countries are rapidly modernizing their production methods and enhancing their technological capacities. This paper reports on the basic concepts of DOROTHY, a just started EU funded RTD program, aimed at transforming the shoe industry and its related business model to strengthen Europe's ability to compete in terms of high added value for the customer (as cost-based competition is not compatible with the goal of maintaining the Community's social and sustainability standards). This transformation relies, on one hand, on the development of tools for the design of customer driven adding value shoes and, on the other hand, on the realization of tools for the design, configuration and reconfiguration of flexible multi-site multi-nation production factories, meant to manufacture those customer driven shoes. This paper will present the key concept meant to actualize the vision to “design customer driven shoes everywhere, manufacture them intelligently anywhere” as a crucial challenge for the shoe industry to gain competitiveness in the global markets, also through better cooperation (and not only competition) with low-wage countries.