Swiss shoe maker On employs one robot instead of 300 workers

On opens production in Zurich - one robot instead of 300 workers Keystone-SDA

The Swiss running shoe company On has opened its first production site for the innovative Lightspray shoe - a fully automated robotic process.

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“Around 300 people normally work on a conventional shoe,” explained Caspar Coppetti, co-founder of On. With Lightspray technology, this work is done by a single robot. “And the shoe is ready in three minutes.”

The robot sprays an extremely thin, robust plastic thread in a spiral around a shoe last onto the existing sole so that the upper of the shoe is created in a single operation – without any seams or glue. The robots come from the industrial group ABB, with whom On worked closely on the development of the process.

The shoe can be put on like a sock, as the seamless, wafer-thin upper material lies directly on the foot without shoe laces and adapts flexibly.

In addition, CO2 emissions are reduced by 75% during production compared to conventional processes. Significantly fewer different materials are also used, which should make the recycling process easier later on.

Olympic Games

The result is a particularly lightweight competition shoe with a total weight of just 170 grams and a futuristic-looking design. Some On athletes already wore it at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where On also presented the new technology to the public for the first time in a pop-up laboratory in the centre of Paris.

However, there is currently only this one model available and it is rather expensive: the shoe costs CHF360. “The big challenge now is scaling up,” said Olivier Bernhard, former triathlete and co-founder of On, in an interview with AWP at the presentation.

Fully automated production in a small space could make On significantly less dependent on traditional production chains in the future. “By using robots instead of hundreds of workers, we can manufacture locally and quickly,” says Bernhard.

According to On, additional global production sites are already being planned. However, it remains to be seen whether the new technology will actually prove to be a strategic advantage over conventional processes in the long term.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

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