Preface

In their efforts to industrialise, developing countries have often relied on technologies developed in industrialised countries. These technologies are generally imported in the form of 'turn-key' factories, and few adjustments - if any - are made in order to adapt them to local socio-economic conditions. An alternative approach consists in importing equipment specified in plant designs prepared by local or foreign engineering firms. Whatever the approach, the choice of technology is generally restricted to those technologies developed and marketed in industrialised countries. Only a few countries have established local engineering firms capable of developing plant designs suitable to local socio-economic conditions and of producing appropriate capital goods.

Reliance on technologies imported from industrialised countries would not necessarily be harmful if these technologies were suitable for prevailing local socio-economic conditions. This is, unfortunately, not always the case. A large number of studies show that these technologies are seldom appropriate for countries suffering from high unemployment and underemployment, lack of foreign exchange, capital, and a strong industrial structure (e.g. capital goods industries, adequate physical infrastructure), and an insufficiently large pool of highly skilled labour. In general, they tend to make a heavy use of scarce resources while abundant ones, such as labour, are little utilised.

What may explain such reliance on imported technologies? Although a large number of reasons can be advanced to explain this phenomenon, the following three reasons are probably the most important ones:

Firstly, local technologies used by small-scale enterprises, artisans, and cottage industries have often proved to be less competitive than imported technologies, both in terms of production costs and the quality of output. These production units have not also been able to adapt their production to changing tastes, or to increase the supply of consumer goods and capital goods at a rate commensurate with that of demand for these goods. Secondly, foreign investors (e.g. as in the case of joint ventures) tend to adopt technologies used in their home countries and their local partners (private entrepreneurs or public enterprises) are generally not in a position to propose and/or impose alternative technologies. Thirdly, in the case of export industries, the type and quality of goods in demand in industrialised countries often require the use of technologies developed in these countries.

While the above reasons may explain the current reliance on imported technologies, one should not conclude that developing countries have no other choice than to adopt these technologies. A number of these countries have developed and successfully applied technologies which are both more cost-effective than technologies developed in industrialised countries and more suitable to socio-economic conditions prevailing in developing countries. These locally developed technologies make a larger use of available labour than do imported technologies, require few imports, generate important multiplier effects on the economy (e.g. through the local production of equipment used by these technologies) and do not rely extensively on foreign skills and know-how. They have been developed for a large number of products and processes, especially those of particular interest for developing countries.

Unfortunately, information on these technologies is not generally available in a useful form, if available at all. They are mostly known in the countries where they have been developed and applied, and are rarely transferred to other developing countries. This may be explained by various reasons. Firstly, those who develop these technologies were either not interested in disseminating them, or did not have the necessary means for the publication and dissemination of the technological information. Secondly, most of these technologies are neither patented nor marketed internationally by engineering firms or equipment suppliers. Finally, they are not generally advertised in trade journals published in industrialised countries . Developing countries are therefore not aware of their existence, or cannot obtain detailed technical information which would enable them to apply these technologies.

Consequently, the International Labour Office and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation have joined efforts in order to improve the dissemination of information on appropriate technologies among developing countries. One outcome of this joint collaboration was the decision to publish a series of technical memoranda on specific industrial products and processes, and to disseminate these as widely as possible among potential and established private and public enterprises.

The technical memoranda are mostly intended for potential producers who have some difficulties in choosing and applying technologies best suited to their own circumstances. However, they should also be of interest to public planners, project evaluators from industrial development agencies, training institutions and national and international financial institutions. In short, the memoranda should be useful to all those who are in a position to influence the choice of public or private investment and therefore the choice of technologies associated with these investments.

The technological information contained in the memoranda is fairly detailed as it would be difficult for the reader to obtain missing information. Thus, clear and detailed descriptions of processes as well as drawings of equipment which may be manufactured locally are provided, and lists of equipment suppliers -from both developing and developed countries - are included whenever the local manufacture of equipment may not be easily undertaken. A methodological framework for the evaluation of alternative technologies is provided in order to enable the reader to identify the least-cost or most profitable technology. Some information on the socio-economic impact of alternative technologies is also included for the benefit of public planners and project evaluators.

While an attempt has been made to provide fairly detailed technical information, there would undoubtedly be cases where some information will still be missing.

The reader may contact technology institutions or research centres listed in a separate appendix or other additional books or journals included in the bibliography. The ILO and UNIDO may also be contacted and every effort will be made to provide the missing information.

Technical memoranda are not intended as training manuals. It is assumed that the potential users of the technologies described in the memoranda are trained practitioners and that the memoranda are only supposed to provide them with information on alternative technological choices. Memoranda may, however, be used as complementary training material by training institutions.

This technical memorandum on small-scale footwear manufacturing is the second of a series being currently prepared by the ILO and UNIDO. It follows the publication of a technical memorandum on a closely related subject: the tanning of hides and skins.¹ Some of the information contained in this latter memorandum is complementary to that contained in this one, and may be found useful by footwear manufacturers and public planners.

¹ International Labour Office and United Nations Development Organisation, Tanning of Hides and Skins, (Geneva, ILO, 1981)

This technical memorandum provides technical and economic details on alternative footwear manufacture technologies used in scales of production ranging from 8 pairs per day to 1,000 pairs per day (i.e. the range of scales of production varies from the artisanal type production to medium-scale production). Substantially larger scales of production are not covered by this memorandum for the following reasons. Firstly, potential footwear manufacturers who may wish to invest in large-scale, capital-intensive plants costing many million dollars would most probably use the services of a specialised engineering firm in view of the large investment involved. Secondly, information on technologies used in these plants is readily available from engineering firms or equipment suppliers from industrialised countries. Finally, experience shows that in machine-intensive footwear plants producing conventionally constructed shoes, spare machine capacity is likely to be at a minimum at outputs approximately equal to 1,000 pairs per 8-hour shift. In fact, equipment is often designed to reach output capacity at this scale, and plants producing substantially more than 1,000 pairs per 8-hour shift tend to group their equipment in such a way as to form separate units producing at the above output level. Thus, footwear manufacturers interested in producing a few thousands of pairs per day may still benefit from the information contained in this memorandum.

The effective dissemination of technical memoranda would require the active participation of various government agencies, trade associations, workers' and employers' organisations, training institutions, etc. Seminars may be organised for the benefit of established or potential footwear manufacturers in order to review the proposed technologies, identify those which are particularly suited to prevailing local conditions and identify the type of assistance needed by manufacturers who wish to adopt one of the technologies described in the memorandum.

This memorandum may be directly used by functionally literate footwear manufacturers who are familiar with accounting methods, and are capable therefore of evaluating the proposed technologies on the basis of local factor prices. However, some shoemakers may not be functionally literate, especially artisans who may be interested in the very small scale of production(8 pairs per day). In this case, information on alternative techniques may be disseminated among these artisans by extension officers or training institutions.

Names of equipment suppliers are provided in Appendix II of the memorandum. This does not, however, imply a special endorsement of these suppliers by the ILO. These names are only provided for illustrative purposes, and footwear manufacturers should try to obtain information from as many suppliers as feasible.

A questionnaire is attached at the end of the memorandum for those readers who may wish to send to the ILO or UNIDO their comments and observations on the content and usefulness of this publication. These will be taken into consideration in the future preparation of additional technical memoranda.

This memorandum was prepared by N.S. McBain and A. Kuyvenhoven (consultants) in collaboration with M. Allal, staff member of the Technology and Employment Branch of the ILO.

A. S. Bhalla,
Chief,
Technology and Employment Branch.