How are shoes made?
Now, let's take a look. The first thing to look at is the management office. So what goes into the management office? The factory owner, the manager, and the business manager are all here. These people are responsible for purchasing, scheduling, and the shoe development staff may also be in this area. But this is all behind the scenes because any material that goes into the shoe must be purchased, so it must be scheduled and delivered. These people basically control all of these things.
Next is the development room. The development room is where the designs first arrive when you send them in. This is where the skilled seamstresses, sample cutters, and pattern makers work. These are the most experienced seamstresses and pattern makers who have enough equipment to hand-make test shoe samples for you.
This is where product development begins. You meet with the factory owner and then send the product to the sample development room. So most of the work in the development process takes place in the sample development room.
Now, let's take a look at what happens when the shoe goes into production. Basically, the business office orders the materials, and all of these materials appear in the warehouse. In this warehouse, you have almost everything you need to make a shoe. You have leather, textiles, rubber, sole components, if they are made in another factory, they have to go into the warehouse. You also have shoe lasts and cutting dies.
Of course, when the raw materials or soles etc come in, everything has to be checked. So there is a large quality control operation inside the material warehouse.
Now, the order comes in, and the first thing to do is to get the material to the cutting department. This is where the leather, mesh, textile, anything that needs to be cut is processed. The workers here will use different types of cutting machines, whether it is leather, textile, fabric, or water jet if it is complex. These are what the manual presses look like, but again, you will be cutting, and then behind each cutting machine, you will see that they have a stacker.
Let's go back to the cutting department. The cutter will operate the cutting machine, and there will be a worker next to him who will collect all the parts and stack them neatly. Because imagine if you're cutting a complicated shoe, it might have 20 parts, and you're cutting a $10,000 shoe, that's a lot of parts, and if they're all different sizes and they don't have size markings on them, it can get very complicated very quickly.
That's the cutting department. After the cutting department is done, all of the upper parts have to be machined. Any part that has a logo on it or needs sewing guides or needs a beveled edge so it can be folded over, all of that machining has to be done in the prep department. So the prep department will prepare the parts correctly again, so any part that has a logo or needs a beveled edge, they have to do all of that machining before the cutting team can start working on it.
Now, this group will also assemble the kits. They will gather all of the parts together so that you can give that bag of parts to the sewing people and they can finish it. Now once you get to the sewing department, typically to support a sewing line, you're going to need hundreds of needles. That's not a lot. You're going to have 10 times as many managers to really make a large sewing line for a small, simple shoe.
Yes, there may also be electronic sewing equipment that does not require labor, or if it is a knit upper, it does not require so many stitches. But these people will do all the sewing operations and separate the work. The sewer does not take all the parts and assemble them. The sewer basically does one operation and then gives it to the next person.
Just like all other departments, there is quality control here. Once the stitching operation is completed, you have to have a team of people check it, and you also need to do some other operations during the stitching operation before sewing the sole. If it is a sneaker, you need to set the toe pad or shape the heel counter. These things are done.
Now, while these are being done, the sole components will be here. These will be the stock assembly operations. So if you have a multi-component sole, let's say it's a capsule and it has EVA in it, or if it's molded EVA and there is an injection molded part, all of these parts have to be glued together before everything can go to the main assembly line. This is the stock assembly.
Here, the workers are unboxing. These parts have been inspected in the warehouse. They are unboxing, applying glue and primer, and then pressing operations. They will check all of these parts and basically finish the sole assembly so that the sole can meet the upper.
Let's get into this because all of these things happen in the backend because you need to feed the assembly line with information. You don't want to mess things up and have the assembly line wait. So you have all of these things done, either waiting in the warehouse or on the just-in-time assembly line, going from one machine to another. You have to organize it so that no one is waiting because that's not efficient.
Let's look at the front end of the assembly line. The first thing that happens in the front end of the assembly line, we say assembly line, but really, we're talking about gluing the upper and the sole together. The first thing that happens is inserting the last into the upper, whether it's a Strobel last or a plate last. That's the first operation. If it's a Strobel shoe, they might steam the upper and then stuff the upper into the last. If it's a plate last, they basically heat the upper, put a little bit of glue on the Strobel board, and then they use a plate last machine like this.
Once you've done the plate upper, you can also do the upper shaping of the waist upper, the toe foam, or the heel upper. Basically, you fix the upper to the last so you can glue the sole on. If there's a little wrinkle left after the toe upper is shaped, then you need to use the polishing station. The assembly line, this conveyor runs through the entire assembly line, so you put it back on the assembly line when you're done.
Next, the worker will start applying primer and glue. Primer is basically what bonds the upper and the sole surface together. So the primer is usually a mixture of glue with solvents, or it may be water-based.
Now, when you get here, the worker basically puts these two pieces together and puts them together by hand. There's a person who aligns the two pieces and pushes them together. Once they're together, it goes to the press. That's what's going on here, the hydraulic press basically squeezes the upper of the last and the outsole to make sure it's all together. Make sure there are no bubbles or air gaps or anything like that.
