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A Novel Standard for Footwear Industrial Machineries

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 7, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011
A Novel Standard for Footwear Industrial Machineries
Giovanni Danese, Member, IEEE, Sergio Dulio, Mauro Giachero, Francesco Leporati, Member, IEEE, and
Nelson Nazzicari
Abstract—Economic globalization has scattered industrial pro-
duction, promoting manufacturing models able to chase the most
favorable conditions in the widened international scenario. In-
terorganizational communication becomes thus a critical element
for production streamline, being the bridge that creates conti-
nuity among industrial districts. However, many sectors still lack
proper communication standards, thus slowing the production
and increasing its costs. The footwear manufacturing industry es-
pecially suffers from this condition, having chronically promoted
a plethora of similar-but-incompatible dialects to supply partial
data exchange.
To regulate and rationalize part of the footwear industry in-
terorganizational communication, in this paper, we present the
Shoe PRocess INTeroperability Standard (SPRINTS), conceived
and carried out within an industrial district, ranging from shoe
design to mass production. SPRINTS is based on the XML
standard language to define a data exchange protocol among
systems and machines of the footwear production field. SPRINTS
describes both “vertical” transfers (i.e., between different steps
of the design/production chain), and “horizontal” transfers (e.g.,
to allow data exchange between CADs from different vendors).
Moreover, it allows a smooth transaction from existing standards,
and it has been tested in real-world scenarios. SPRINTS is de-
signed in collaboration with ASSOMAC, an association of shoe
machineries manufacturers, comprising the worldwide majority
of footwear manufacturing companies (http://info.assomac.com).
The standard has been validated and already adopted by a few
companies, that contributed to its development. In this paper, we
present the standard and a tool able to validate and graphically
render a SPRINTS file.
Index Terms—Footwear manufacturing, industrial districts, in-
teroperability, XML data exchange standard.
I. INTRODUCTION: THE NEED FOR A
COMMON DATA STANDARD
I N the last decades, intelligent automation led to a dramatic
improvement in the manufacturing process in terms of
costs, quality, safety and affordability with respect a pure
craft-made production [2]–[4].
The advent of the economic globalization introduced a diver-
sification: low/medium quality products are made in countries
Manuscript received March 31, 2011; revised June 22, 2011; accepted July
03, 2011. Date of publication September 06, 2011; date of current version
November 09, 2011. Paper no. TII-11-187.
G. Danese and F. Leporati are with the Department of Informatica
and Sistemistica, University of Pavia, Pavia, I-27100 Italy (e-mail:
gianni.danese@unipv.it; francesco.leporati@unipv.it).
M. Giachero is with 7pixel S.r.l., via Copernico 2, I-20082 Binasco, Milano,
Italy (e-mail: mauro.giachero@gmail.com).
N. Nazzicari is with CSIS, Computer Science Department, George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA 22030 USA (e-mail: Nelson.nazzicari@gmail.com).
S. Dulio is with Dulio Consultants and Assomac [1], I-27029 Vigevano, Italy
(e-mail: dulio@tin.it).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TII.2011.2166789
1551-3203/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
713
offering low-cost labor, and high-quality products are still made
in historical districts, where, however, a wider industrialization
and automation should be introduced to reduce the too expen-
sive craft-made contribute. The footwear sector is a good ex-
ample of this trend [5], [6].
The growing relevance of Inter-Organizational Systems
(IOS), especially in the case of industrial districts, has raised
much attention both in the academic literature and business
practice. IOS could be defined as comprehensive logic and
technological architectures that integrate interorganizational
processes through shared data and knowledge flows [7], [8].
The aim is to satisfy interfirm coordination needs also including
electronic data interchanges and standards for digital commu-
nication, supply chain management, electronic funds transfer,
interfirm knowledge management tools, shared databases, and
so on.
Features of the industrial district model—especially the
emerging ones—fit very well with functionalities and opportu-
nities offered by IOS and coordination technologies in general.
Since the middle of 1990s, probably Electronic Data Integration
(EDI) is the most known kind of digital interface. Compared
with the past, the notions of open standards and modularity
characterize the modern era of IOS. Current interfaces—i.e.,
XML, WSDL, SOAP, APIs, and “ad hoc” solutions—permit to
logically decomposing district value chain into many discrete
functions/capabilities and easily resembling it, in absence of a
high dependence on a specific node.
A digital communication standard, with its own specific
industry-based data dictionary, allows a fluent direct electronic
data transfer between information systems/technologies. It pro-
vides a common set of business terms, definitions, and digital
forms. If inconsistencies or inefficiencies are detected, then
the district architecture could be rapidly reengineered without
unreasonable investments. API technology applies the modular
connectivity approach also to the level of different “pieces of
software” that perform specific functions. The benefits of this
approach, especially in the district framework, are evident. The
main problem is the effective adoption and sustained diffusion
of the standards [9]. Indeed, technological interface shows its
potentials only if a large number of network nodes adopt that
common digital language. Compatibility, switching costs and
relative advantages are some of the most frequently considered
determinants towards interface diffusion. However, the very
critical issue in the district framework is probably the firm per-
ception about “relative advantage” of technological standard. It
means the extent to which a potential adopting firm views the
new digital interface as offering competitive and cost reduction
benefits, benefits over previous ways of performing the same
tasks. In terms of technological interface, another critical point
concerns the choice about property communications standards
714 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 7, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011
versus open systems. The former leads to a competitive ad-
vantage based on ambiguity and inimitability, while the latter
support the development of competitive advantage based on the
so called “first mover” advantage, on sustained diffusion and
on dynamicity over time, also in the case of small and medium
enterprises [10].
The industrial district of Vigevano, located in the
north-western Italy, is known worldwide for the high quality
of its production of machineries and industrial equipments for
shoe, leather and tan industries. However, from the beginning
of this century, the footwear machinery industry has been
increasingly confronted by a fierce competition.
Although recent years showed a moderate economic resump-
tion of this district and a partial retrenchment of the emerging
economies impressive expansion, local small enterprises rec-
ognize the need for a radical strategic repositioning, especially
towards:
• intercompany networking initiatives, in order to create
flexibility among local Small and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs);
• innovation projects, as a response to the rapid growth of en-
vironmental turbulence and dramatic cost reduction stem-
ming from emerging competitive economies;
• better exploitation/exploration of ICT technologies, in
order to amplify benefits and highlight new opportunities
about the first two points.
These interoperability and efficiency requirements highlight
the need of a unique and universally accepted communication
standard. A lot of data description formats are available (DXF,
IGES, STEP, VRML among the most popular and used).
However, they are often hard to be managed and interpreted.
Moreover, they are linked to specific implementations, and
adopted by isolated producers independently. Interoperability
is thus hardly achieved.
Close to them, several proprietary formats survive, often used
as a defense for application domain or markets, instead of a real
support to the interoperability of the customer systems.
On the other hand, shoe producers notice more and more the
need of exchanging data within the same firm or among the
chain companies and could gain considerable benefits from the
availability of a standard, complete and adopted by the most im-
portant market players.
Since the footwear industrial field is highly specialized, a uni-
versal data exchange protocol would be very useful, allowing
a compatible data exchange among machineries charged with
several production phases. At the present time, a similar stan-
dard protocol does not exist and shoe design is made through
CAD programs. However, different software manage geomet-
rical data in a substantially different way. Typically, nongeo-
metric information, intrinsic of shoe manufacturing process, are
squeezed in CAD files through ad hoc customizations. More-
over, since a lot of unofficial dialects are present, often compa-
nies are forced to produce case-specific filters to adapt and trans-
late files between formats. This confusion makes the process
slow and expensive. Human contribution is still critical when-
ever a data transfer is needed between different softwares. This
scenario forces all companies to control and adapt the informa-
tion coming from CADs (typically in DXF format [11]) or from
other machineries (typically in HPGL or ISO format).
In this paper, the Shoe PRocess INTeroperability Standard
(SPRINTS) is presented, a XML-based standard that covers
most of the information transfers needed in the shoe manufac-
turing field, from shoe design to production control.
SPRINTS was conceived and carried out within an industrial
district, and copes with the real-world necessities of the partner
companies. The proposed standard focus on the generalization
of the data structure and hierarchy, and is as technology inde-
pendent as possible.
SPRINTS can describe both vertical transfers (i.e., between
different steps of the design/production chain), and horizontal
transfers (i.e., to allow data exchange between CADs from dif-
ferent vendors).
SPRINTS was created by means of an incremental and itera-
tive approach. Industrial partners provided information and ob-
jectives to the development team, which responded with a pro-
totype. The prototype was then analyzed and checked by the
companies, providing suggestions on fine-tuning arrangements,
and sent back to us. The process went through several iteration
up to the point where all functionalities were satisfactory for all
partners involved.
In the following, the technical requirements are described
suggesting the design and the adoption of a XML standard for
data description (Section II), together with the different phases
characterizing the manufacturing shoe process (Section III) and
the limits of the previous projects that tried to propose a unified
“language” for footwear machineries (Section IV, “state-of-the-
art”). Sections V and VI depict the “structure” of the developed
standard, whileSection VII illustrates a viewer tool which allow
to easily open and visualize a SPRINTS file, while verifying
its compliance to the format. The benefits assured by SPRINTS
adoption and the feedback of the companies involved in the
project are highlighted in Sections VIII and IX. Considerations
about the work still necessary to spread the standard diffusion
conclude this paper (Section X).
II. THE PROBLEM
Modern production contexts need wider and wider interop-
erability among software applications with different nature and
origin. Indeed, this is relevant especially when passing from the
design to production, exploiting strong automation and integra-
tion among processes and inside them.
At the same time, interoperability is needed at the shop-floor
level when machineries with strong automation should commu-
nicate among themselves (synchronization signals or process
data) or with computer systems controlling production lines or
their single cells.
There are examples in literature of standards defining process
data developed in several but different sectors to reach these tar-
gets [12]–[18] and of papers providing a survey about them [19].
However, the features of the footwear field led us to a completely
innovative and application specific proposal.
We distinguish three types of data that need to be exchanged
(Fig. 1):
• geometrical data, produced during the 3D Computer Aided
Design (CAD) design process and relative to the last, to the
upper together with its components, and to the other main
DANESE et al.: A NOVEL STANDARD FOR FOOTWEAR INDUSTRIAL MACHINERIES
Fig. 1. Data exchange directions in footwear manufacturing.
constitutive elements like the bottom (leather or plastic)
and heels;
• technological data, integrating the geometrical ones with
information related to the specific process producing each
designed shoe’s component and depending on its nature
and on the correspondent cycle phase (i.e., which cutting
tool should be used or its action range);
• process data, specifying the machinery to be used in the
particular production phase (i.e., rotation velocity in a
roughing head or the number of passes of a rotary brush
for glue).
These data feature proper characteristics and description
needs and can be exchanged horizontally (i.e., among software
applications or machineries of different manufacturers and
with heterogeneous characteristics and even among different
subjects operating in the same die during same designing or
production phases) or vertically among different phases (i.e.,
between design and production or between the process control
level and the single machineries, also in this case considering
different subjects operating in the same chain [20]).
Finally, the efficient management of these processes requires
describing relevant data regarding nature, function, source and
destination, in a universal understandable way and to transport/
transmit those data in a safe and affordable way among different
applications and phases.
These ideas motivated the design of the SPRINTS stan-
dard format (intellectual property of ASSOMAC) describing
geometric, technological and process data related both to
machineries and to their driving applications.
At first, it has been conceived, starting from a reconnais-
sance of what until now was adopted by the different compa-
nies, which brought to a first definition incorporating all the
benefits of the proposed solutions. Then, a first group of pilot
companies began to introduce the standard to spread its utiliza-
tion throughout the shoes machineries sector. The presence of
companies leading this manufacturing area helps in establishing
SPRINTS as a de facto standard for machinery data exchange.
715
Fig. 2. Shoe design and its components.
III. THE MODERN FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY
In the following, we give some fundamentals about shoe com-
ponents and their different manufacturing phases. People fa-
miliar with these topics can skip this description and continue
with Section IV.
A. Shoe Components
The basic components of a shoe are (Fig. 2): upper, insole,
sole, and heel; others optional parts can be added such as laces,
buckles, buttonholes, etc.
The upper is the topmost part of the shoe, attached to the in-
sole and the sole through stitching and/or glue. It can be realized
from different materials such as leather, fabric or other less valu-
able materials. In the classic shoe kind, it is divided into vamp,
which covers the foremost part of the foot, and quarter. Often
uppers are reinforced with a reinforcement tip and counter (on
the back).
The insole is the base the shoe is built on; it is the most critical
bottom component from a functional point of view, since this is
where the foot plant lays and is the junction element between
upper and sole. In most cases, it is made of fiber paperboard
(covered with a thin leather layer on the inner shoe side at the
end of the manufacturing), while only seldom leather or other
materials are used.
The sole is the part laying on the ground and is made of
leather, rubber, plastic or even wood. It is attached to the upper
with nails, glue or stitching.
The heel is a support made of leather, wood, rubber or other
materials, applied to the back part of the sole in the heel area;
its height ranges from a few millimeters to several centimeters.
Aside from sustaining the body weight, it gives the shoe its par-
ticular appearance, and this is the reason why there are so many
variants.
B. Shoe Design
Up to a few decades ago, shoe design and construction could
be considered a fruit of engineering, architectural and stylistic
716 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 7, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011
experience, surely a great demonstration of manual skills. Al-
most everything was left to shoe designer’s fancy, interpretative
ability and experience.
The dependence on the skills of a single person and the time
required by the design (often requiring repeated trial-and-error
steps) induced companies to spend energies on the automation
and simplification of the whole process. This change is still hap-
pening, and the current production mixes up technology and
handcrafting skills.
The CAD and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM)
technologies were introduced in the footwear sector only in the
1980s. Developing these new technologies became important
when the fashion induced a much wider selection of different
shoe models.
There are two main footwear CADs:
• 3D CADs which allow the designer to interact with 3D
entities such as the last, heel, upper, and sole in a way
similar to the traditional manual process;
• 2D CADs which only allow to manage the upper after it
has been flattened.
C. Manufacturing Phases
Manufacturing a shoe requires a great deal of workmanship
and personal experience, even though most of the manual work
is assisted by more or less sophisticated machines.
There are three main philosophies on which machines for
footwear production are built: manual, semiautomatic, or auto-
matic machines.
Depending on the amount of automation present in the fac-
tory, there can be even the three types of machines all together,
spread over the whole manufacturing chain.
The shoe assembly process (also named lasting or making)
can be split in six main steps:
• last and upper preparation;
• assembling of the upper on the last;
• heat treatment;
• bottom and sole preparation;
• sole fastening;
• last removal and finishing.
The number and type of processes required to make a shoe
depend heavily on several factors such as the type of shoe, the
desired quality of the finished product, production time con-
straints, and final cost.
Here is a list of the most general manufacturing rules, even
though every shoe factory follows its own rules.
1) Last and Upper Preparation: The last: the shoe assem-
bling phase is done on a last to give the shoe its right shape.
The upper, initially flat, is forced to assume the last shape with
pincers and other grabbing devices, which are part of some ma-
chines (such as the toe lasting machine and the seat and side
lasting machine). This central role in the production process
gives the last a great importance, since errors in the last de-
sign or production can lead to problems in later manufacturing
phases or in the shoe usage.
The upper: the initial upper design is performed by a shoe
designer directly on the last or on a standard shape (the flattened
upper) following the fashion designer drawings. This work is
done for a single size, it is flattened (if done on the 3D last) and
scaled to generate all the shoe sizes usually available. A testing
phase, during which a small set of shoes is produced, is usually
done to detect and fix possible errors.
The next step is the component (pieces) production. The
leather cutting can be done manually for small productions, or
automatically for medium and large-scale productions. Cutting
machines can have or not have socket punch, thus actually
changing the operations needed to obtain a single piece.
Cutting with a socket punch is fast but requires the production
of templates (a time-consuming process) which are pressed on
the leather.
Cutting without socket punch can be either hand-done (using
a cutter and a paperboard reference) or automatically using cut-
ting machines which are somewhat similar to plotters with sev-
eral cutting heads. The pieces to be cut are coded in a file and
projected on the leather so that the operator can place them in
the best (less space waste) way. There are many technologies
for this kind of machines (oscillating blade, ultrasonic, laser,
water-jet, etc.). Cutting without a socket punch is very eco-
nomic and flexible and (obviously) removes the time penalty
of building the template itself. It is the preferred technology for
prototyping and, with the most advanced software, even less ex-
perienced personnel can obtain good results. Nevertheless, for
large productions of identical shoes, it is slower than using a
socket punch, so there is market for both technologies and in-
deed some footwear factories have both of them.
The leather usually requires the splitting phase to ensure uni-
form width on the whole area, and a skiving and folding phase
to have better-looking edges. Some additional operations can be
required, for example to realize ornaments. Once all shoe pieces
are available, they are stitched together. As usual, several means
and materials are available to achieve different cost/quality com-
promises.
Once the upper is complete, the outside counter performing
is done. In this phase, the heel area is thermally shaped and the
counter is placed.
The insole: the next step is to temporarily fasten the insole to
the last, through paper tape or a nail, and its trimming. These
operations are usually either manual or performed with semiau-
tomatic machines.
2) Assembling the Upper on the Last: The shoe assembling is
usually done with two semiautomatic machines, the tack lasting
machine (for the fore part) and the waist lasting machine (for the
lateral and back parts). The upper is fastened with glue and/or
nails. A peening phase ensures good coupling between glued
components.
3) Heat Treatment: The assembled shoe must remain on the
last for some time to permanently assume the proper shape.
To shorten this time, the shoe is subjected to relatively strong
thermal shocks.
4) Bottom and Insole Preparation: The next steps are
roughing (used to remove the leather superficial layer whose
finishing treatments are somewhat glue repellent) and gluing
of the bottom preparing it to the sole fastening. These phases
are usually performed through semiautomatic machines, and
sometimes the same machine performs both operations.
5) Sole Fastening: In this phase, the sole and the upper-in-
sole (still on the last) are joined. To guarantee perfect coupling
DANESE et al.: A NOVEL STANDARD FOR FOOTWEAR INDUSTRIAL MACHINERIES
Fig. 3. The manufacturing shoe process.
a sole-press is used. Doing this operation with great care is ex-
tremely important for the quality of the finished product.
6) Last Removal and Finishing: Once the shoe is completed
the last is removed. It is now possible to fasten the heel and
the final operations (like polishing) are performed. After some
quality checks, the finished shoe is confectioned.
Fig. 3 summarizes the previous considerations onto the shoe
manufacturing steps.
IV. THE STATE-OF-THE-ART
Other standards have been proposed to solve the communica-
tion problems of shoe manufacturing process. However, those
attempts were seldom adopted by companies and never saw
real-world implementations. The CWA15043 [21] project, pro-
posed (July 2004) as part of the EFNET 3 project [22] does
not count significant implementations. Some of these projects
were too poor to allow a complete description of the process
and others were too much specific resulting in a freedom limi-
tation for the machine producers.
EFNET3, in particular, was the most recent step of the enter-
prise promoted by the European Confederation of the Footwear
Industry (CEC, [23]) to define a European data description
standard (SHOEML), at first related to commercial transactions
(EFNET1 and EFNET2), and then to design issues (EFNET
3). In this last case, however, the focus is only centered on
the horizontal geometrical data exchange between CAD/CAM
systems, touching on our project aims only marginally and in
a not complete way.
SPRINTS, on the contrary, is the first standard project that
starts from the real necessities of both users and producers and
that has real possibilities of implementation and adoption.
Moreover, SPRINTS is not an isolated project: all along the
shoe manufacturing sector a technology innovation is devel-
oping. Machinery is a high technology product, but production
717
method and production organization yet follow a traditional and
old approach and there is no much room for further improve-
ments. However, the necessity of being competitive on new mar-
kets requires to optimize also those parts of the process, leading
more and more toward a nearly complete automation.
In the past, some EU projects aimed at preserving produc-
tion activities that are bound to shoe manufacturing through
the development of advanced production systems. Few projects
worked on distributed control system for optimization of mate-
rials passing from one machine to another [24] or to apply well
known international standards (IEC-61499) to shoes plant au-
tomation [25].
Another very innovative high technology project (EURO-
SHOE) was about the attempt of obtain personalized shoes
at prices comparable to those of mass production, developing
custom made models as were normal before industrialization
[26]. It is not only about the aspect of the shoe but also to
adapt it to the real shape of the foot. The target is to have a
more comfortable shoe that can be also adjusted to anatomical
imperfections.
The SHOENET project was strictly related to footwear sector
but it was more oriented towards issues related to the Supply
Chain and the definition of business documents [27].
The CEC-made-shoe EU project continued the previously
cited projects with a definition of a Strategic Collaborative Net-
work able to coordinate production and transmission of business
documents and workflow oriented activities (the extremes of the
chain) [28].
In [29], more details about these projects can be found,
but they unfortunately never reached complete acceptance
by the footwear industries so as to be implemented on their
machineries.
In other sectors close to shoe manufacturing, the standardiza-
tion already happened, such as in the textile one. However, all
analysis made show that in the shoes production, there are sev-
eral more problems related to the variety and the number of pro-
cesses involved and SPRINTS features inputs and implementa-
tions coming straight from the companies belonging to the field.
V. THE GENERAL CONCEPTS OF THE STANDARD DESIGN
The process bringing from the idea for a new shoe model
to the complete shoe production is compound by many phases,
during which the problem arises of describing data in a way that
is usable by all process members, supporting communications:
• from 2D CADs and cutting machines;
• from 3D CADs and last woodturning machines;
• from 3D CADs and assembling machines;
• involving material variants and production orders.
Among these, the most felt issue is the first one, and to com-
pensate for the absence of a standard technology, producers
adopted many DXF dialects, incompatible with each other. Nev-
ertheless, they suffer the limitations induced by a format con-
ceived for different uses.
SPRINTS introduces a proposal for a data format that:
• represents the 2D geometric data without suffering the
DXF limitations, and in particular enabling vector and
semantic descriptions where appropriate;
718 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 7, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011
• describes 3D geometric data in a way usable by both CADs
and machinery;
• describes stitching;
• describes material combinations and production orders;
• provides a uniform communication language between
CADs and machines, and, with minor emphasis, between
different CADs.
One of the standard objectives is also to be completely inde-
pendent from adopted technologies and implementation details
of any product.
VI. DATA DESIGN SUMMARY AND STRUCTURE OF A FILE
The shoe design phase defines the geometries of every shoe
component which is associated to a specific manufacturing
phase. These geometries are repeated many times, in properly
sized versions depending on the shoe model and fit. For what
relates to bidimensional processes, two data families can be
distinguished, related respectively to shapes and automatic
placement.
Shape data includes borders and internal paths, with actions
associated, text, either printed on the piece or on a sheet accom-
panying it, notches of various kind.
Data related to automatic placement include piece direction-
ality (to account leather anisotropy) and quality areas (hidden
areas admit lower quality).
About the 3D context, the significant data relate to last ge-
ometry, working areas and paths, elements about the insole and
heel geometry.
Other significant data include assembly directives, material
specifications, and production orders.
To achieve a suitable file structure while keeping it easy to
manage, it was decided to distribute it in different XML files
related to different topics; XML is a well known technology in-
dicated by the literature to support interorganizational systems
and industrial standards for data exchange [30], [31], and to put
all of these and their pertinence in a single ZIP archive. XML,
in fact, is not conceived for a specific data set like DXF, but for
generically structured definitions explicitly devoted to commu-
nicate information of different nature. This defines XML as a
“markup meta-language,” since the elements and attributes sig-
nificance can be customized through a suitable scheme for a spe-
cific application field. What follows describes the content of the
archived XML files.
A. Introduction to the Data Format
Only manifest.xml (declaration of the file type) and gen-
eral.xml (general information about the project) are mandatory:
the combination of some or all of the other files available
determine the meaning of the archive.
The main purpose of manifest.xml is to redefine information
concerning the type of file, while preserving the compatibility
with previous standard version in the case it should evolve.
General.xml, on the contrary, contains information related to
the project itself. This currently includes descriptions about the
model described, the authors and more generally textual infor-
mation that are not elaborated.
B. 2D-Geometries
Bidimensional geometries description (2d.xml) starts with a
series of tags, containing size-indepen-
dent information and processing data related to specific piece.
A unique identifier allows referencing from the size-dependent
sections.
The component properties list is followed by geometric de-
scriptions ( tag). Components are treated
as a set of paths, each divided in a sequence of tracts. To achieve
the required flexibility, each tract can be described using several
different approaches (sampling, vector-based, semantic), even
at the same time. This, together with proper restrictions aimed
to ease the format adoption and the development of low-cost
solutions, enables several production-time optimizations which
are, at the present time, either handmade or completely driven
by heuristics.
Paths can identify the component perimeter, an internal open
or closed working path or an area. To each path is associated
an action, describing what has to be done with respect to it.
Available actions include cutting, etching and marking (printing
on the component surface, usually to ease assembling), as well
as operator reference lines and quality information usable by
automatic placement algorithms.
C. Assemblies
This file (assembly.xml) describes stitching paths, grouped by
geometry (size). Stitches are defined either using the path ab-
straction and then specifying some attributes, like back-tacking
and point-to-point distance, as well as a set of arbitrary points.
This approach simplifies CAD export features and allows the
description of decorative stitches (such as company logos).
D. 3D-Geometries
Three-dimension domain information (3d.xml) are about:
• last geometry: it must be defined with different precision
levels so it can be used for last turning and for shoe design,
moreover surface decomposition must also be easy to do;
• workpath definition, allowing automatic tool driving and
specifying the action to be performed;
• insole and heel basic definition, allowing automatic heel
nailing.
The last geometry is defined through a sampling process
whose rates are organized in accordance to the following rules:
• the description uses a certain number of closed lines placed
around the last; every line has the same number of points
and every point has a unique identifier, that is always the
same in different lines;
• the final mesh has triangular faces;
• the resulting structure is based on rings that share the same
number of points.
It is possible to specify the interpolation error and for each
point the specific surface (top, bottom, upper) to which it
belongs. It is also possible to have different sampling (with
different distances), but they need to share the same reference
system.
Concerning the workpaths, geometric features of a lot of
manufacturing processes can be defined using one-dimen-
sion lines in 3D space (i.e., pulling over—lasting machines,
heel-seat lasting machines, or machines for direct injection
DANESE et al.: A NOVEL STANDARD FOR FOOTWEAR INDUSTRIAL MACHINERIES
onto uppers). Workpaths belonging to the same process can be
grouped and it is also possible to specify materials combina-
tions for which the set of workpath is valid.
Heel fixing is different from the processes already discussed,
so they have their own data structure.
Insole and heel base are supposed plane to simplify their rep-
resentation. Heel volume is approximated by a set of circular
frustums. Both in the planar part or in the solid one, it is pos-
sible to specify where nails are allowed and were forbidden. It
is also possible to specify heel fixing method: nailing, gluing or
both.
All information are grouped by size . Specific nu-
meric identifiers associate 3D information with 2D information
contained in other files.
For every geometry, it is possible to specify one or more
custom coordinate transformation matrices. It is possible to add
the meaning of the specified transformation (e.g., one roto-trans-
lation could move the last so that one specific point is in the axis
origin).
E. Materials and Production Order
The file is divided in two parts: the first one
describes every material usable in the project, specifying its
name, thickness, and an unique id. The second part lists ma-
terial combinations allowed in the project.
The file specifies how many shoes must
be produced, if some extra copies of a single component are
needed, and if the production of other components must be
stopped.
F. Add-On
To improve the data exchange, SPRINTS considers informa-
tion not managed by the previously used DXF format. Up to
now, this information was added through additional files with
respect to those provided by the CAD output. An example of
this concerns cutting machines with automatic placing for which
the orientation of the leather piece with respect a reference di-
rection is required together with the admitted tolerance. These
data are not represented in the DXF format, while others have
been more conveniently redefined in SPRINTS. A significant
example is in the management of the sizes, for which DXF uses
the stratagem of tally marks that, however, makes the machines
job very dull. In SPRINTS, this problem is solved by simply
adding more fields for the requested sizes.
VII. THE VIEWER
As a part of the development process, we have also imple-
mented a Viewer, i.e., a software able to help suitable standard
adoption (Fig. 4), to check the syntax correctness of the data
contained in SPRINTS files and to draw those relative to the 2D
part, allowing different levels of introspection.
The employed software technology exploits Xerces C++li-
brary for reading XML files and Qt4 for advanced graphics and
for managing the data structures, in a portable way [32].
This last set of libraries is fully used with a rich set of
high-level data structures (hash tables, database, meshes, vector
graphics) and advanced functions for 2D design. Qt4 allows
719
Fig. 4. A typical snapshot of the Viewer.
multithreading and communication among objects through the
signal (transmit) and slot (receive) flexible mechanism, inten-
sively employed during the data-tree structure identification
[33].
The overall design has been conceived and developed using
ArgoUML [34]. At first, a parser has been carried out, which
reads the SPRINTS XML file through the SAX interface (ex-
ploiting the plug-in Xerces library) returning a tree-structure of
the document: we preferred SAX to DOM, since it builds the
structure in an incremental, and thus less heavy way. The con-
trol check is performed through XSD files (schemas) containing
particular keywords that indicate the right content of every file
contained in the SPRINTS archive.
The internal data representation is a tree-structure that reflects
the scheme of the 2d.xml file providing an easy way to access the
contained data. On the other hand, the internal structure of the
Viewer to manage and visualize the files is complex but enough
flexible to allow, in the future, adding further sections.
The implemented paradigm was the Model-View-Controller,
which provides a separation among data and related graphic in-
terface, together with more Views linked to the same Model,
each one upgraded when data are modified. Each component,
for example, can be developed in more sizes and each version
can be showed with the relative single parts.
Moreover, the internal structure of the Viewer is modular, thus
easily allowing future development and implementation of new
features. Since data contained in the standard file are structured
on many levels, it was very important to easily select and ex-
plore them: it is possible for the end users to move up and down
the data tree, easily showing, hiding or highlighting different el-
ements, executing zooms and pans and customizing the appear-
ance of drawn data selecting different rendering options. Nev-
ertheless, users can also visualize data in text format to manage
single elements details and to modify their organization.
The Viewer exploits the following technical features:
• multiplatform: it is compatible with Microsoft Windows
(from 98 to Vista), Mac OS X (from 10.3), Linux, Solaris
and other operating systems, supporting both 32 and 64 bit;
• it uses hardware acceleration and of the video card when
possible;
• it is not bound to any specific XML-parsing library, that
can be changed dynamically through a plug-in approach;
• it provides multilanguage support.
720 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 7, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011
VIII. THE STANDARD BENEFITS
The SPRINTS standard aims to limit or, when possible, to
eliminate data passing problems during different steps of shoe
manufacturing process. That would be possible only if every
actor involved will implement correctly the standard. Here, a
brief list is presented of practical advantages coming from stan-
dard adoption for the machineries customer side:
• no translations needed any more: this will allow more au-
tomation, that brings time and cost reductions; moreover,
no more translation errors will happen;
• it will be possible to receive orders from every customer;
• no more binding to specific machinery producers;
• elimination (or at least a strong limitation) of on-board ma-
chinery programming: that procedure consumes time and
slows the production down, on the other hand, the standard
adoption supports more efficient offline programming;
• it will be possible to get, in every manufacturing step, in-
formation from other steps, allowing process optimization
and less constraints in designing.
Also machinery producers benefit from standard adoption:
• leader producers will gain a standard method to describe
machine functions, allowing them to concentrate on spe-
cific features that characterize their products;
• new and growing producers will not need to project new
communication solutions and could concentrate on ma-
chinery quality;
• every producer could reach higher technology levels thanks
to an easier way of sharing data.
The standard will also help to move production to higher
quality levels, that is useful to face towards new and growing
markets. Designers will gain new expression freedom, that will
help to create strong brands and styles, thanks to a more accu-
rate manufacturing process.
Closed standards led to no communication between different
companies: the proposed standard could bring to new dynamism
and aid new ideas to spread.
Concerning its adoption, the standard foresees three gradual
integration levels. At first, we need to write down translation
programs from old closed standards to the new one (and vice
versa). This is the quickest and cheapest method because ma-
chineries are not modified so allowing to use old machines that
cannot be upgraded anymore. However, this approach adds new
steps to existing process and translation can be a very chal-
lenging task.
The second integration level is useful to computer guided ma-
chines: a software update could add the new standard as one of
the direct input supported and provides an internal translation. In
this case, the standard adoption will be completely transparent
to end users.
At the maximum level of integration, all machinery is
compliant to the standard format and no more translations
are needed: a specific driver transforms standard data to elec-
tric/mechanical commands. This is clearly the hardest step but
also the one that can lead to best results.
IX. REAL EXPERIENCE, FEEDBACK, AND LIMITS
The analysis and definition work of the standard involved sev-
eral proof-of-concept tests under the responsibility of a selected
group of companies, which participated in the definition activi-
ties of the standard itself.
These tests focused, in particular, to the most relevant “use
cases” as identified by the testing group and according to market
priorities. CAD to cutting machines was agreed to be the most
relevant and demanding case to be explored, being this the typ-
ical situation in which data are to be transferred between soft-
ware applications and machinery provided by different vendors
in normal productive environments. In the scope of this activity,
three cutting machine producers and a CAD developer imple-
mented specific converters in their suite of software applications
to write and read data in the SPRINTS format. The tests were
run by generating a complete set of data for a normal cutting
job in the system of one vendor and importing them in the ma-
chine controller of another and proofing both the integrity and
completeness of the data transfer as well as the efficacy of the
operation. This allowed to demonstrate the compliance of the
standard to its initial specifications and its capability to fulfill
the industry demands that drove its development.
This group of early implementers are currently offering
SPRINTS as the recommended data exchange format to their
clients. The successful case of the CAD to cutting machine
transfer was not followed by similar adoptions for other cases
of CAD to machine exchanges, in particular, in the domain of
transfers of 3D data to process machines in the shoe assembly
phase and the CAD to CAD exchange scenarios.
There are several factors that can explain that. The most rele-
vant one is the low market diffusion of highly integrated and au-
tomated footwear production systems which, on the one hand,
necessarily require a solid and effective data exchange frame-
work such as SPRINTS is thought to provide and, on the other
hand, are the ideal vehicle for its diffusion. As long as this tech-
nological evolution in the footwear sector is not fully accom-
plished there will be no strong market drivers for the widespread
adoption of the standard and hence its diffusion will be limited
to the few implementation cases mentioned above.
SPRINTS, nonetheless, represents a powerful enabler for
such technological growth of the sector. Its adoption is cur-
rently under evaluation as part of a research project dedicated
to the study of new shoe manufacturing solution based on
a wide usage of robots for various processing steps and
whose programming is done via CAD data. In parallel to that
ASSOMAC [1] (the association of shoe machinery producers
which fostered its development) is intending to continue with
its development and to actively promote its adoption by its
associated companies.
X. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
Within the footwear manufacturing, the lack of coded or stan-
dardized directives and operations forces additional work and
leads to the same continuous difficulties recurring every time a
specific production phase is going on.
Thus, a common effort of the involved industries (although
competitors) is needed to define a precise data standardization
and to minimize possible incompatibilities: that was the lesson
of our case study passing over the considered industrial district.
DANESE et al.: A NOVEL STANDARD FOR FOOTWEAR INDUSTRIAL MACHINERIES
Fig. 5. The SPRINTS stand at SIMAC exhibition
Currently, the standard has been tested and run on a few ma-
chineries of the firms involved and presented to the main com-
panies of the sector.
Moreover, the design/development of the standard is in its
maturity stage. It seems that critical issues concern an expected
focus on both business and technological dimensions:
• technological issues: due to dynamic innovation of the
footwear sector the standard could be in a permanent
prototyping;
• business issues: standard management (interna-
tional strategy, closedness versus openness, brand
development,…).
Several future developments can be conceived at this point in
the work, in order to improve the standard and to extend its use:
one of the most important, for example, deals with the CADs in-
teroperability; however, we feel that some managerial activities
will be critical in order to support the implementation/diffusion
phase:
• fluent negotiation among firm partners about standard
specifications/rules; the aim is to assure a good equilib-
rium between costs and benefits, between technological
upgrade and exploitation of each machinery peculiarity;
• communication and marketing, in order to create a critical
mass of standard adoption; if only few suppliers accept this
language, then the value added for costumers is poor;
• openness degree of the standard (is it better to open its def-
inition spreading its diffusion or to make it close defending
the achieved production quality?);
• certification of the effective adoption of the standard; this
is probably one of the critical success factors of SPRINTS:
(self-certification? Official body for formal certification?
Self-certification and committee for the control of effec-
tive/fully adoption? Does Market self- regulate this dy-
namics?…).
A few firms belonging to the industrial considered district
introduced SPRINTS in the new version of their machineries.
Moreover, the new standard has been officially announced and
presented at SIMAC (the International Exhibition of Machines
and Technologies for Footwear and Leather Goods Industries)
which was held in Bologna on October 2009 (Fig. 5).
721
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Giovanni Danese (M’01) received the Ph.D. degree
in electronics and computer engineering from the
University of Pavia, Pavia Italy.
He is Full Professor of Computer Programming
and Computer Architecture with the Faculty of En-
gineering, University of Pavia. His current research
interests include parallel computing, special-purpose
computers, and signal and image processing.
Sergio Dulio has strong experience as a consultant
and manager in the technical assessment and perfor-
mance evaluation of complex automated systems. He
led a research consortium with partners in the shoe
machinery field and research institutions (Italian
National Research Council). He has been active in
the analysis and implementation of innovative pro-
duction processes for shoe manufacturing since 1996
(SINTESI). He was also Director of the Consortium
of Italian Shoe Machinery Companies.
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Mauro Giachero received the Ph.D. degree and
Laurea degree (First Class With Honors) in com-
puter engineering from the Faculty of Engineering,
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
His current research interests include computer
and microprocessor architectures, compilation
techniques, and resource-constrained computing.
Francesco Leporati (M’96) received the Ph.D. de-
gree in electronics and computer engineering from
the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
He is Associate Professor of Industrial Informatics
and Industrial Electronics in the engineering faculty
at the University of Pavia. His current research in-
terests include automotive applications, FPGA and
application-specific processors, embedded real-time
systems, and computational physics.
Prof. Leporati is a member of the Euromicro So-
ciety.
Nelson Nazzicari received the Ph.D. and a 1st class
Laurea degree (Hons) in computer engineering from
the Engineering faculty, University of Pavia, Pavia,
Italy.
He is an Electronic and Computer Engineer
currently working on joint research projects between
the Microcomputer Laboratory, University of Pavia,
Pavia, Italy, and the Centre for Secure Information
System, George Mason University Fairfax, VA. He is
mainly focusing on creating embedded, low-power
high-performing hardware for pervasive computing
and security related applications.