The differences between footwear and footware

Each of the parts, or components, in a current shoe is placed in a position that will have the part sewn or glued to a neighboring part. When the shoe is put together this way, there is usually an estimate for how long the connection will bear up under use, when one foot strike after the other is like an assault on the bonded areas. The emphasis on glue, thread and tacks is there because it is in the connected areas that strains will occur, where one part can tear away from another. It is such an obvious area for ongoing concerns: why else would the manufacturers spend as much as they do on assurances that the connections are consistent. What we should really be wondering at is why the most natural of foot movements are tearing at the bonding areas in the first place. The uniform nature of current footwear is its ultimate flaw.

The human foot will itself be put through its paces, changing as the circumstance change, balancing when necessary and holding on when required. During a normal stride the foot will torque this way or that due to the various sections with differentiated axial relationships: it means there are relationships and configurations between bones that must be stepped through. Are certain times better than others for a particular shoe part to react? Absolutely. But current shoes are so constructed that they will drag the other components about, as if on a train. There is some real need for the new shoe that will evenly sequence its reactions in accordance with each act of the foot. Some of the benefits in using the new shoes will come from the order in them; how the foot strike is met is completely rationed, much like a foot will ration its own acts. In footware, the components are secured with a radical change, compared with what is out there now. It might be said that the new shoes are modeled after studies in free range of motion, with components that are coordinated in their acts (which is better than being jerked at).

With Adaptive FIT there is a sequence of operations that will mirror whatever the foot might do, and it is all due to the independent nature of elements in footware architecture. Each component in the shoe structure is providing several degrees of certainty in how they sequence a response when 'ordered' by purposeful moves on the users part. What will matter in footware architecture is that components are designable. When something is built, be it a building or computer chips, what is core to its working is the framework. Architecture brings process and predictability wherever it is used, building on its basic principles of design. It is the process in the discipline that is bringing order to the operation of shoes, and it is the whole of the individual's movements within them that can now be more predictable.

How current shoes are produced have changed little over the years: what a shoe builder does at each station is much the same thing that the cobbler did, back in the day when craft was paramount. With a look at one industry after another we can see where production by piecework is superseded by a form of technology that will have changed the paradigm, but when the footwear industry is viewed, real-time procedures have shown little progress. Most will only deal with the automation of machinery, all those aids to production that will assist the workers who put the product together. One shoe after another, it is usually a team of workers that can approach optimal speed in this endeavor. What will really matter though are the transition points between parts of the gait, one after the other -- but it seems this is lost with the current footwear -- the stages of manufacturing somehow more important. With new footware, on the other hand, even in production, the focus is on the individual user. The shoe's new component systems are adapting from the start.

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