The Zellerfeld company, which specializes in the additive manufacturing of individually designed shoes, is working together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Production Technologies IAPT to scale up its production capacities. The aim is to expand the current production environment – consisting of around 200 3D printers – to a system with up to 5,000 additive manufacturing units. The challenge lies not only in the technical implementation, but also in complying with regulatory requirements and optimizing the use of space and production logistics.
The shoes from Zellerfeld are manufactured entirely additively and are based on individual scan data. Thanks to the consistently digital manufacturing process, both design variants and personalized fits can be realized without the need for traditional moulds or tools. The company thus combines concepts such as batch size 1 and digital sustainability with the industrial logic of additive manufacturing.
In a six-week analysis phase, the key production figures were evaluated together with the Fraunhofer IAPT, bottlenecks identified and requirements for a large-scale production layout defined. The focus was on functional aspects such as material flow and maintenance access as well as safety-relevant points such as fire protection and emergency concepts. In addition to the production zones, the resulting layout also integrates office and technical areas and takes into account fail-safe measures.
Lennard Stoever, Co-Founder and President of Zellerfeld, comments on the collaboration: “Fraunhofer IAPT helped us to validate key findings with a practical analysis – a valuable basis for our further scaling.”
The findings serve as a basis for the selection of suitable locations and the gradual implementation of a production system that is both flexible and industrially scalable.
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