Manager for an Efficient and Innovative Footwear Industry Erasmus Project

Project Title

Manager for an Efficient and Innovative Footwear Industry

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The European footwear sector has been changing and it demands now much more specialised expertise and new skills that are suitable to the company’s specific requirements towards new business models, innovative and high-tech technologies, design and styling, environment issues, etc. To be competitive, companies must be able to adapt to these changes. The latest needs for skills in European footwear industry, performed by European Sector Skills Council for TCLF industry in 2014 identified various drivers of employment and skills that are influencing and shaping the TCLF sector, including the footwear sub-sector, such as: environmental change, economics and globalisation, technological change and consumer demand. The TCLF 2014 Report revealed that “five times more jobs are to be opened for highly qualified employees than for low-qualified employees by 2025”. Within this context, the necessary qualifications for working in the European footwear industry must be redefined for the labour market to promote skilled professionals to the industry.

The SHOEMAN project aimed to provide these instruments for the footwear sector and to offer to the existing and aspiring managers the most up-to-date required skills, training needs and information. As such, a set of 6 intellectual outputs was created by the partners, targeting the project objectives, supported by management activities and an exploitation plan that ensured the dissemination of its results and their future reuse. These outputs were: a) the development of a research report, based on desk and field research, depicting the state of the art for the footwear sector, basis for the development of the other project outputs (2,3,4,5,6) and a comparative study of the footwear sector which can also be consulted by external stakeholders interested in studying the industry; b) the development of a European Qualification Framework (EQF) of the New Manager for an Efficient and Innovative Footwear Industry, a descriptor of qualifications based on learning outcomes and with ECVET scores; c) the development of the MOOC “New manager of the footwear industry”, a freely accessible and open licensed training platform dedicated to the improvement of knowledge and skills of managers and potential managers; d) the creation of the Virtual Challenge Community, a community made of relevant stakeholders active in the sector of footwear, that served as a platform for the Innovative Footwear Products Competition and that lead, in the end of the project, to the launch of a crowd funding campaign for the winners of the competitions; e) the development of a Book of lectures for the Intensive training course; and f) a Decalogue of the 10 benefits deriving from the collaboration between companies, research and training centres in developing innovative footwear products. The consortium also conducted a training activity with the virtual presence of trainees (due to the COVID 19 pandemia, the planned C1 training in Romania couldn’t be conducted in physical presence but was done online).

The intellectual outputs developed by the SHOEMAN consortium are concrete and transferable. As an example, the SHOEMAN MOOC reached more than 1400 students not only from the EU but from all over the World. The content can be exploited even after the project conclusion, both by the partners and by other stakeholders. Managers and potential managers are thus offered the opportunity to access the MOOC on the platform even after the end of the project and the world of Education, Research and Industry will have the opportunity to be part of a community which will be the ground for developing innovative footwear products, new projects and common initiatives. Another example is the research activity implemented during SHOEMAN that became the starting point for implementing research activities in the field.

SHOEMAN aimed to and reached a large number of persons inside and outside the partnership, using different communications activities and channels by promoting the project and its results among European involved and/or interested organizations, and at a national and regional/local level, by promoting the project results among target organisations and end-users. Almost 150000 persons are estimated to be able to be informed about the project and benefit from its activities, including VETs, policy-makers, associations and organisations dealing with footwear, universities, research centres, managers of the sector and trainers.

The SHOEMAN consortium was established on the basis of combining the different backgrounds, experience and expertise of 10 partners from 8 countries, who had experience in implementing transnational projects in the field of vocational training, also for the footwear industry. It is clear that this approach allowed to perfectly complement each other’s expertise reaching success with very high quality results..

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 288109,72 Eur

Project Coordinator

TURKIYE AYAKKABI SEKTORU ARASTIRMA GELISTIRME ve EGITIM VAKFI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• ISC-INTERNATIONAL SHOE COMPETENCE CENTER PIRMASENS GGMBH
• TASEV MESLEKI VE TEKNIK ANADOLU LISESI
• POLYTECHNEIO KRITIS
• INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DEL CALZADO Y CONEXAS
• CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT
• CIAPE – CENTRO ITALIANO PER L’APPRENDIMENTO PERMANENTE
• UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA GHEORGHE ASACHI DIN IASI