Cut & Nest
Reads every hide and roll, marks scars, brand marks and grain direction, then solves a defect-aware nest across the live size curve and drives the blade or laser cutter.
- Leather yield +8.3 pts
- Scrap −40%
- Nest solve under 15 s
Seven products, one closed loop
Buy the workflow that hurts most, then close the loop. Each product ships with its own models, connectors, guardrails and dashboards — and speaks to the others through the factory orchestrator.
Every product owns a physical step
These are not modules on a dashboard. Each one perceives a station and writes setpoints back into it.
Stitch & Upper
Controls stitch tension, seam alignment and upper assembly sequence across stitching stations, catching skips, puckering and edge deviation before the upper moves on.
- Seam defects −57%
- Tension held ±4%
- 14 stations per line
Mold & Sole
Runs compression and injection moulding for EVA, PU and rubber — temperature, pressure, dwell and cure — to hold midsole density and outsole geometry against material-lot drift.
- Density variance −62%
- Short shots ≈ 0
- Cycle time −9%
Last & Bond
The make-or-break agent: lasting fit under heat and tension, then primer, adhesive, activation temperature, press pressure and cure — the parameters that decide whether a shoe lasts years or delaminates in months.
- Delamination returns −71%
- Bond-gap escapes 0
- Window held in 96% of shifts
Sensing, robotics, yield and knowledge
The second half of the loop: verifying every pair, moving material, and remembering what worked.
Quality & Fit
Vision and metrology on bond line, seam, sole geometry, cosmetics and 3D fit — predicting defect and return risk per pair, not per sampled batch.
- First-pass yield 98.2%
- Escape rate 0.14%
- 100% pairs inspected
Robot & Assembly
Drives robotic material handling, upper and sole assembly, cleaning, lacing, insole insertion and packing on Jetson-class edge units.
- Manual handling −38%
- Pack accuracy 99.9%
- 6 cell types supported
Yield & Energy
Optimises material waste, energy per pair, line balance and changeover scheduling — and owns the shoe-and-line digital twin that simulates a run before it starts.
- Energy per pair −18%
- Changeover −46%
- Twin fidelity ±2%
Footwear-Knowledge
Retrieval over patterns, BOMs, construction specs, material and adhesive datasheets, and quality procedures — so every agent decision cites the clause or datasheet behind it.
- Citations on 100% outputs
- Multi-tenant isolated
- Versioned per factory
Products become a run
Selected products appear as nodes in the run graph. Unpurchased steps stay in observe mode, so the loop degrades gracefully instead of breaking.
View as table
| # | Node | Agent | Depends on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Twin simulate | Yield-and-Energy | — | SUCCEEDED |
| 02 | Cut and nest | Cut-and-Nest | Twin simulate | SUCCEEDED |
| 03 | Stitch upper | Stitch-and-Upper | Cut and nest | SUCCEEDED |
| 04 | Mould sole | Mold-and-Sole | Stitch upper | SUCCEEDED |
| 05 | Last upper | Last-and-Bond | Mould sole | SUCCEEDED |
| 06 | Bond sole | Last-and-Bond | Last upper | APPROVAL |
| 07 | Inspect pair | Quality-and-Fit | Bond sole | SUCCEEDED |
| 08 | Finish and pack | Robot-and-Assembly | Inspect pair | SUCCEEDED |
The single biggest cost line in the plant
Irregular, defect-speckled hides waste 15–30% of the most expensive material in the shoe.
Cut & Nest scans each hide, marks scars, brand marks, holes and grain direction, then solves a defect-aware nest across the live size curve — placing forgiving parts over marginal leather and critical parts on clean areas. It drives blade and laser cutters directly and reports yield per hide, per lot and per cutter.
- Yield reported per hide, not per batch
- Grain-direction and stretch constraints respected
- Handles textile rolls and synthetics on the same table
- Rejected areas fed back to the supplier scorecard
Yield on lot LH-2291
| Measure | Baseline | Footeon |
|---|---|---|
| Leather yield | 79.1% | 87.4% |
| Scrap | 20.9% | 12.6% |
| Nest solve time | 41 min (manual) | 12.3 s |
| Out-of-tolerance parts | 7 | 0 |
Bond window, RUN-4417
- validated window · 62–68 °C activation
- observed RH · 58% → 71%
- primer flash-off · +18% at 71% RH
- proposal · activation 66 °C, press +0.3 bar
- status · APPROVAL
- approved · 10:34 · audit A-88213
- result · 0 bond-gap escapes across 1,200 pairs
Where warranty cost is decided
Primer, adhesive, activation temperature, press pressure and cure decide whether a shoe holds for years or delaminates in months.
Last & Bond controls lasting fit under heat and tension, then holds the bonding process window as humidity, adhesive lot and line speed drift. Because bonding parameters are usually validated under a brand quality agreement, the agent defaults to act-with-approval: it proposes, evidences and waits.
- Bond-line vision on every pair, not a sample
- Process window recalculated per adhesive lot and per shift
- Approval requests carry sensor evidence and datasheet clause
- Handles cemented, injected, vulcanised and direct-attach constructions
The usual first purchase
Most plants start where the money is most obviously leaking.
Cut & Nest on the leather line
Leather and casual footwear
Defect-aware nesting on hides where scrap runs above 20% and the best cutters are near retirement.
Payback typically inside two quarters
Last & Bond on the athletic line
Sports and performance footwear
Bond-window control where delamination returns and warranty claims dominate quality cost.
Delamination returns −71%
Mold & Sole on injection
Contract manufacturers
Density and cure control across EVA, PU and rubber where lot chemistry drives short shots and density variance.
Density variance −62%
What each product senses and controls
Sensing without control is a dashboard. Every Footeon product does both.
| Product | Senses | Controls | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cut & Nest | Hide geometry, defects, grain | Nest layout, cutter path, blade profile | Yield per hide, scrap, supplier scorecard |
| Stitch & Upper | Seam position, tension, skips | Stitch tension, station sequence | Seam defects, rework, station drift |
| Mold & Sole | Press temperature, pressure, dwell | Recipe, cure time, cavity balance | Density variance, short shots, cycle time |
| Last & Bond | Lasting fit, humidity, bond line | Heat/tension profile, activation, press | Bond escapes, window adherence, approvals |
| Quality & Fit | Bond line, 3D fit, cosmetics | Accept, rework or hold routing | First-pass yield, escape rate, return risk |
| Robot & Assembly | Part pose, cell state | Robotic handling, finishing, packing | Throughput, manual handling, pack accuracy |
| Yield & Energy | Material flow, energy, line balance | Changeover order, scheduling, setpoints | Energy per pair, waste, OEE |
What the loop returns
Aggregate outcomes when the whole loop runs rather than one product alone.
- +8.3 points of leather yield on defect-aware nesting
- −71% delamination-driven returns after bond-window control
- 98.2% first-pass yield across inspected pairs
- −46% changeover time between models and colourways
From the cutting room to the quality office
Three roles, three different reasons to buy.
“The nesting agent found yield our best pattern cutter could not — and then explained the layout hide by hide. We stopped arguing about scrap and started managing it.”
Leather yield 79.1% → 87.4%
“Bonding is where our warranty costs live. Having an agent watch humidity, primer flash-off and press pressure on every pair — and stop for a human when it wants to move a validated parameter — is the first thing that has actually moved delamination.”
Delamination returns −71%
“We run 40 model changeovers a month. Simulating the nest, the mould recipe and the bond window in the twin before the line starts took hours out of every launch.”
Changeover time −46%
Design-partner scenarios are illustrative and modelled on public footwear-manufacturing benchmarks — named references are [PLACEHOLDER] pending customer approval.
Product questions
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No. Footeon is a software and factory-edge autonomy layer that sits on top of the machines you already run. We connect over OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus TCP and vendor SDKs, read sensors and vision, and write setpoints back through the controls you already trust — with approval gates on any validated parameter.
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Athletic and sports footwear, casual and leather footwear, and safety footwear, across both brand-owned plants and contract manufacturers. Cut, stitch, mould, last and bond are shared mechanics; the models are tuned per construction — cemented, injected, vulcanised or direct-attach.
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Yes — and they are exactly where bond control earns its keep. Recycled EVA, bio-TPU and mono-material uppers shift adhesion behaviour and process windows; the twin simulates the new window and the bond agent holds it as lot chemistry drifts.
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A typical wedge deployment on one line runs six to ten weeks: two weeks of sensing and baseline capture, three to five weeks of shadow-mode model tuning against your material lots, then graduated autonomy. Whole-factory rollouts follow line by line.
Pick the workflow that hurts most
We will baseline it, show you the run Footeon would have executed, and price the wedge.