Comparative study of Intercom water base adhesives VS Solvent base
and natural rubber adhesives.

1) Methodology
The same materials and equal pairs (1000 pairs of shoe uppers) followed the 2 ways of
glue application as described below in parallel:
1- All upper glue application was done by means of brush and bottle application using
yellow solvent based NP glue and solvent based Rubber glue.
2- All upper glue application was done by means of spray application using Intercom
spray system and Ecostick 9015st glue.
2) Quantitative Factors
Over a week period both methodology were carried in parallel to understand:
1- Glue qty usage
2- Application speed
3- Cost of labor
3) Unit costs

Labor Cost/hr	Solvent Yellow NP glue Cost/Kg	Solvent Rubber based glue cost/kg	Ecostick 9015st Cost/kg
2 USD	2.5 USD	1.5 USD	8 USD

4) Qualitative Factors
1-work flow
2-product quality

Quantitative Findings

	Labor Cost/hr	Solvent Yellow NP glue Cost/Kg	Solvent rubber glue cost/kg	9015St Cost/kg
Unit cost	2 USD	2.5 USD	1,5 USD	8 USD
Number of workers		1	2	1
Hours		2	2	1
kgs of glue		2	2	1
Total cost labor /hr		4	8	2
Total cost glue		5	3	8
Total glue + labour		9	11	10
			20	10

Qualitative findings
1- Product quality:
Intercom water base adhesive 9015st showed to be not effected by ageing and
temperatures, leaving shoe uppers naturals at feel, with no odor and non yellowing
after a month of storage at room temperature.
2- Work flow and Efficiency:
Application by spraying allows higher efficiency with less manpower (1 to 3/4). No
staff is required for bottle filling operation, and less manpower is required also for
upper cleaning procedures, to remove glue stain from grain side.
Stacking of shoe upper require much less care and space using intercom 9015st due
to the nature of the glue. Uppers can be piled on top of each other without the
danger of getting glued together and ruining the outer surface. Therefore the
moving to the stitching line can be done with a much smaller number of boxes and
racks saving on moving time and space.
3- Saving on pairs
Avoiding the problems of stains (point 2), migration (point 1), allows to save pairs
of shoes affected by any relevant defect, and therefore have a better QC output.
Hardware costs
Considering the cost of hardware of Intercom Spray System at 3000 USD depreciated
at 10 years and assuming maintenance costs of about 400 USD per year, it will make
total cost of implementation of the new system around 340 USD/years.
We can calculate can 150 USD per year in brushes and pipe-bottles for the manual
application of solvent base glues.
Overall findings
Considering the Cost saving (labour/time and qty), we can assume based on average
production volumes of 1000000 pairs per month a total saving of 10000 USD per
month (10 USD/1000pairs).
Adding to this the over all quality advantage and work flow streamlining, we can easily
assume an additional 4300 USD saving per month due to reduced defects and waste.