A few decades ago, many shoes were made mostly by hand. Skilled workers cut leather, stitched the upper, and assembled the shoe piece by piece. This method worked well for small production, but it was slow. It also depended heavily on the experience of the worker.

As demand for footwear increased, factories started using machines to support the process. Today, almost every medium or large factory uses some kind of shoes manufacturing machine. These machines help repeat the same process many times without much variation.