Shoe-last design exploration and customization

The shoe industry is a very competitive industry and in order to capture the market, customized shoes are desired nowadays to satisfy consumers' needs on style, fit and comfort. Companies need to either develop a system for quick design changes, creation of huge virtual design variations and in some cases adoption of mass-customization principles to reduce cost. Shoe-last is the "heart" of shoe making since it mainly determines the shoe shape, fashion, fit and comfort qualities. This study proposed a system to enable shoe-last design changes, exploration and eventually enable mass-customization. The system enables continuous change of styling and fashion to reflect personal taste without the need for physical design. Design exploration involves representation of styling curves using parametric curves. Modification of the styling curves, by changing the parameter values, can be used to explore different designs. This is useful to create slight variations of shoe-last. Since the designs are parameterized, design can be scaled on individual shape and size to create customized shoe-last. Results of the study can be used to create a system for shoe-last design exploration and mass-customization system for individual designs in a cost effective manner.