Streamlining Footwear Production With AI-Powered BOM Automation

Our client is a global footwear manufacturing company with tens of thousands of employees and multiple production facilities. The company produces shoes for many of the world’s leading footwear brands, based on pre-designed models provided by the brands themselves.

The production of a pair of shoes involves numerous steps and teams. A key part of this process is creating the Bill of Materials (BOM), which requires input from multiple departments based on supplied design specifications.

• The BOM process involves many teams (upper, outsole, lining), each responsible for specific parts.
• Teams manually reference supplier catalogs to compile material lists.
• The process is time-consuming, repetitive, and prone to errors.
• Collaboration across departments can be inefficient and inconsistent.

Therefore, the client needed an AI-driven solution to streamline this process and reduce manual effort. Given Ekotek’s track record in delivering AI solutions for the manufacturing sector, they selected us as their trusted technology partner.

Ekotek developed a tailored AI agent to support the client’s production workflow and automate the BOM creation process. This AI agent integrates Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to meet the specific needs of the client.

• Computer vision: Analyze and understand visual inputs such as technical shoe drawings and material images. It detects components, performs image segmentation to separate different shoe parts, and classifies materials based on visual cues. This allows for automatic recognition of parts such as uppers and soles, critical in understanding which materials are required.
• NLP: Read and comprehend unstructured text data from various documents (supplier catalogs, material specifications, and historical BOMs). It continuously learns from new data, enabling it to make contextual decisions based on prior patterns and documentation.

By combining these technologies, the AI agent can autonomously parse documents and images, extract relevant information, and suggest or even generate BOM files without human intervention.

Ekotek successfully delivered the AI agent to the client, significantly reducing manual work for their teams. The solution streamlines the design and BOM creation process, improves accuracy, and enhances production efficiency.

Key features of the AI Agent:

• BOM creation using AI: Automatically compiles material lists based on design data and supplier documents.
• Part name recognition and classification: Identifies and categorizes shoe components from visual and textual inputs.
• Image segmentation: Separates and analyzes different shoe parts in design diagrams to inform material needs.
• Reading text information from PDF: Extracts material and design data from unstructured PDF documents.
• Data structure and synthesis: Converts fragmented information into structured datasets usable in production systems.

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