The Speedfactory, as the Ansbach plant is called, belongs to Adidas, a
giant German sports-goods firm, and is being built with Oechsler Motion,
a local firm that makes manufacturing equipment. Production is due to
begin in mid-2017, slowly at first and then ramping up to 500,000 pairs
of trainers a year.
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People want fashionable shoes immediately, but the supply chain
struggles to keep up. “The way our business operates is probably the
opposite of what consumers desire,” says Gerd Manz, the company’s head
of technology innovation.
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From the first sketch of a completely new pair of trainers to making and
testing prototypes, ordering materials, sending samples back and forth,
retooling a factory, working up production and eventually shipping the
finished goods to the shops can take the industry as long as 18 months.
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The Speedfactory’s main strength is to shorten the supply chain, and so
the time to shops, to less than a week, perhaps even to a day, once the
trainer design is complete.
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Adidas wants the new plants to complement the Asian operations, not to
compete with them. But as advanced manufacturing expands, the need for
armies of manual workers in Asian factories will surely diminish.
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