Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 15:25English

Under the new Erasmus+ project “Footwear in the 21st century: New skills for the design of drastically improved comfort, sustainable, fashion-oriented and scientifically-led footwear products”, the European Confederation of the Footwear Industry and its project partners will work to improve the consumers’ living standards, through the analysis of the product life-cycle, while contributing to fight climate change. The project is an initiative that involves 14 different partners from 6 different EU Member States and was launched at its kick-off meeting in Iasi, Romania, on 20-21 February 2019.

On 20 and 21 February 2019, the partners of the Erasmus + SciELD project gathered in Iasi, Romania, to set up a long-term work during the whole project duration and to establish the work plan that will be done in the following months. These two fruitful days gave the partners’ project the opportunity to discuss the next steps to come and to analyse the challenges to overcome.

The increasing consumer’s demand for a personalised, differentiated and fashionable footwear product requires the footwear industry to adapt and make a qualitative approach to the good’s conception. In order to do so, the project will identify, record and analyse all critical aspects of the footwear life-cycle and the parameters that affect footwear quality while ensuring sustainability, comfort and performance, particularly through the use of 3D CAD-CAM-CAE, 3D scanning, material selection and rapid prototyping tools, to improve the consumers’ living standards.

The lack of dedicated schools and training infrastructures across Europe have led the footwear industry to propose new alternatives to the students both to attract them to the sector and to improve and modernise the curricula, focusing on the Footwear Designer and Product Manager professions. These specific training modules and innovative learning methods will appeal to high-calibre candidates for filling employee shortages in the EU footwear industry.

This new Erasmus+ Project will impact the high-education institutions, SMEs, research institutes, associations, consumers as well as the society. A joint collaboration between high-education institutions and SMEs, research institutes, associations will ensure the development of new learning methods and will guarantee solutions for challenges and problems affecting the footwear sector. The SciLED project will also be beneficial both for the consumers and the society over the long-term period, with the implementation of a health-conscious and scientifically-led footwear with reducing wastes through the meticulous selection of material.

For news and updates, more information can be found on the SciLED’s website at http://www.sciled.eu.

Press release

C.E.C.

25 January 2019