Clamor for Stan Smiths is such that Adidas is building a new automated factory to meet demand. The company hopes robots will help it respond more nimbly to rapidly changing tastes, but promises this people-less plant and others like it will merely complement existing suppliers. Of course, it’s really a harbinger of a worker-less direction. The jobs that would have been will never be, and then the ones that actually are will be gone. Why would it be any other way?

From Emma Thomasson at Reuters:

The new “Speedfactory” in the southern town of Ansbach near its Bavarian headquarters will start production in the first half of 2016 of a robot-made running shoe that combines a machine-knitted upper and springy “Boost” sole made from a bubble-filled polyurethane foam developed by BASF.

“An automated, decentralized and flexible manufacturing process… opens doors for us to be much closer to the market and to where our consumer is,” said Chief Executive Herbert Hainer.

Larger rival Nike is also investing heavily in new manufacturing methods. But it has not yet put a date on when it expects that to result in more U.S.-based production.

Adidas plans high volume production in the near future and will establish a global network of similar factories, although it expects them to complement existing suppliers rather than replace them as it seeks to keep growing fast.

“This is on top. It is a separate business model,” Gerd Manz, head of technology innovation at Adidas, told journalists.

Adidas currently makes about 600 million pairs of shoes and items of clothing and accessories a year. It plans to grow sales by almost half again by 2020.

The new factory will still use humans for parts of the assembly process, around 10 people will be on the ground for testing purposes during the pilot phase, but Adidas is working towards full automation.•