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Industry 4.0 Technologies Revolutionising Footwear: Paving the Path to Circularity Through Innovative Services

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Human-Centred Technology Management for a Sustainable Future (IAMOT 2024)

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Abstract

The footwear industry, a sub-sector of textile industrial sector, faces increased pressures towards higher levels of sustainability and circularity along all the value chain. Along the last decades, shoe products have become more complex products, integrating a greater number of components, materials diversity and often long supply-chains related to cost reduction and production or sourcing delocalization strategies. Full value-chain digitalization, as a cornerstone of Industry 4.0 paradigm, plays a key role for leveraging more sustainable and circular products, namely by traceability operationalization and forthcoming instruments such as Digital Product Passport. This research studied, via a state-of-art framing of the challenges followed by qualitative approach, how Industry 4.0 technologies can support the development of new services that contribute to sustainable and circular practices in footwear companies. An interview-based survey was conducted to 6 footwear companies, to map the adoption level of Industry 4.0 technologies and cross-linking to circular services business models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal

    Leonor Monteiro, Ana Correia Simões, António J. Baptista & Rui Rebelo

  2. School of Economics and Management, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Leonor Monteiro

Authors
  1. Leonor Monteiro
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  2. Ana Correia Simões
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  3. António J. Baptista
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  4. Rui Rebelo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana Correia Simões .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. INESC TEC, University of Aveiro, Porto, Portugal

    Ricardo Zimmermann

  2. INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal

    José Coelho Rodrigues

  3. INESC TEC, Porto, Grande Porto, Portugal

    Ana Simoes

  4. INESC TEC, Porto, Grande Porto, Portugal

    Gustavo Dalmarco

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Monteiro, L., Simões, A.C., Baptista, A.J., Rebelo, R. (2025). Industry 4.0 Technologies Revolutionising Footwear: Paving the Path to Circularity Through Innovative Services. In: Zimmermann, R., Rodrigues, J.C., Simoes, A., Dalmarco, G. (eds) Human-Centred Technology Management for a Sustainable Future. IAMOT 2024. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72494-7_53

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