An End-of-Life Decision Support Tool for Product Recovery Considerations in the Footwear Industry

Theodoros Staikos (1) , S Rahimifard (2)

1 Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
2 Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

The footwear industry is a manufacturing sector which utilises a wide variety of materials and processes to produce a range of distinctly different products, from sandals to more specialised footwear. Currently, more than 19 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide every year. This creates a large waste stream at the end of the functional life of shoes, which are often being disposed in landfills. Producer responsibility concerns and forthcoming legislations as well as increasingly environmental consumer demands expected to challenge the way the global footwear industry is dealing with its end-of-life products. This paper highlights the potential benefits of developing a footwear product recovery methodology and an associated software tool to support decision-making regarding the determination of the most suitable (in environmental, economic and social-technical terms) manner in which to treat post-consumer shoe waste. Such methodology in addition to supporting design and material selection processes could also provide benchmark information for the selection of the best end-of-life practise for a selected range of different shoe types. The paper concludes by providing a computational viewpoint of an end-of-life shoe recovery decision support tool.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Theodoros Staikos, S Rahimifard. An End-of-Life Decision Support Tool for Product Recovery Considerations in the Footwear Industry. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 2007, 20 (06), pp.602-615. ⟨10.1080/09511920701416549⟩. ⟨hal-00513393⟩