Timberland Reduces Product Development Time by 33 Percent

The Timberland Company (www.timberland.com) is using 3D printing technology from Z Corporation (www.zcorp.com) to help solidify its position as the vanguard of outdoor-inspired footwear.

Quickly and easily creating its own physical foot and shoe prototypes has helped Timberland reduce their development time by 33 percent and its last  production time by 92 percent, according to Toby Ringdahl, CAD manager in the company’s global footwear product development division.

Increasingly prevalent in iterative product development, 3D printers produce tangible physical models from computer-aided design files much as document printers produce business letters from word-processing files. Timberland’s ZPrinter® 650 produces multicolour 3D models, which are used in refining design concepts.

 “We used to hire an artisan or service provider to make our models, and it typically took two weeks to receive the finished goods,” said Ringdahl. “Now we simply press ‘print,’ remove our models from the ZPrinter, and continue to move our product concepts to market. Every time we print, we shorten the development cycle and help get new styles to consumers while they’re hot. That’s typically six months earlier than if we still outsourced our models, and at a fraction of the cost.”