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We’ll be having a launch party for the Reee Chair on September 10, from 6.30 until 9.00 pm in central London. This is our chance to thank the many organisations that have helped us to bring this new product to the market, since we started planning it in 2006, and show the finished product to our customers, press and partners.
Reee Chair
We have now set up a Pli facebook group with the intention of creating an open forum for product development inspired by Cameron Sinclairs talk on ‘open source design’ which can be viewed in a previous post. Social networking can be a very effective tool for connecting designers with end users and so we aim to create a space where everyone can share views and ideas on Pli’s products. This could involve what people like about what we’re doing and what they feel could be improved as well as discussing product development, choosing colours/finishes and coming up with concepts for completely new products. The move towards a more collaborative design approach where consumers aid decision making right the way through the product development process is yet another step to improving our products.
Please feel free to join our group and post any ideas or thoughts you have to kick off our new open forum design group. To start off we’d like to know what colour frame you’d like to see on the Reee Chair? Choose from any of these RAL Colours and we’ll render and upload a chair with your frame.
A screen shot of Pli's Facebook group page
In the last two weeks Pli’s latest product the Reee chair has gone into full scale production. It has taken two years product development to get to this point with the help of many, many people and organisations, from the designers Sprout to the subcontracted parts manufacturers and London Remade who supported the injection mould tooling.
Reee frame welding jig
Reee injection mould tool
On Friday last week Pli was invited to deliver a 10 minute presentation at the Upcycling Textiles Symposium held Chelsea College of Art & Design. The day was run by TED (Textile Environment Design) and it aimed to encourage the London textile and fashion community to embrace sustainable thinking.
Tim and I attended the first session of the day. First up was a talk form Marie O’Mahony who co-authored Techno Textiles: Revolutionary Fabrics for Fashion and Design - books 1 and 2 plus many other textile based publications. Her talk was very interesting and walked us through some amazing concepts and case studies including some “living” fabric which had been grown from fungi and bacteria.
The ninth and final day (well maybe…there is a rescheduled day due to the fire on day 3) was delivered by Leigh Ashton, Managing director of The Sales Consultancy. Straight away she set the tone of the day with her positive and direct sales attitude which became slightly infectious after a while, even to a slightly cynical designer like myself. However we quickly realised her presentation style wasn’t by chance, it was a honed and highly developed sales tool.
Get yourself noticed
The first step in any successful marketing/sales plan is to define the key steps you need to reach a goal. Five seems to be the magic number, because as for the 5S system of Lean manufacture, Leigh had also settled on five keys ideas for success. They are as follows:
This week we welcome Tim Maughan to the team. Tim recently finished studying Nottingham University where he completed his product design and manufacture degree. He is working with Pli for the next few weeks, looking into sustainable packaging options and packaging life cycles for our products.
We chose Tim for this project due to his experience in sustainable packaging. He developed a strong concept for a sustainable Heinz Ketchup bottle. Have a look at that and some more of his work on his Coroflot portfolio page
After learning the theory of Lean manufacture on day 7 it was time to put it into practice, this meant playing with Lego. The reason for the Lego was to demonstrate the difference between a ‘push’ style of manufacture, a traditional style of manufacture, and ‘pull’ style developed through Lean manufacture. A simple metaphor to explain what was to come is try and pulling a piece of string versus pushing it.
If you want results in manufacturing the current English trend is to go ‘Lean’. However this concept of ‘Lean’ manufacturing has been around since the 1960’s if not earlier. During this time post-WW2 Japan was rebuilding its manufacturing infrastructure and trying get rid of its reputation for low-quality products. American experts were sent to Japan to help the automotive manufacturers improve quality. Companies like Toyota and Yamaha embraced this quality driven Lean manufacturing style. From there, the Japanese made Lean manufacturing their own with unsurpassed levels of quality and manufacturing efficiency. Soon Europe began to implement its own style of lean manufacture. Nissan, Toyota, and Honda brought Lean manufacturing principles to the UK during the 90’s. Now these UK plants are leading the way in manufacturing innovation and efficiency.
Day 7 and 8 of the NPD course were delivered by Colin Allaway from London Manufacturing Advisory Service. He has worked in manufacturing for the past 37 years, for a wide range of companies from plastic caps to aerospace, so he soon had us up to speed on the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principles that lean manufacture is based around.
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Day 6 of the NPD course was delivered by Michael Gutierrez PERA/Supply London. He was focusing on the legislation and liability that comes with being a manufacturer/designer/distributor. I am beginning to realise from this and the previous intellectual property modules, that design is as much about having a good lawyer as it is about innovation. Saying that, the key to getting the best bang-for-your-buck from your legal assets seems to be using them early in your development process. If you can afford legal cover/advice at the front-end it can save you a lot of money if things turn to custard. This is what lawyers like to call “risk-management”, because legalities are going to get your money at some point. It is best to give the beast a sacrifice rather than taking a chance with it eating you alive.
After the dramatic events of day 3 which I fortunately missed out on, Furniture Works had managed to regroup and relocate for day 4 which was on intellectual property. This module was headed by Marice Cumber from the intellectual property advice company Own-it. She had scheduled a range of speakers from various sectors of the IP industry.
The first speaker was David Morgan from the UKIPO. He gave an overview of how IP works and some case-studies showing the value of IP to a company. I had seen him speak before at a previous London Remade seminar and it was a good refresher on the basics of IP.
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On Wednesday 25 June I followed my colleague Alex onto the New Product Development course organized by Furniture Works at London Metropolitan University. Alex had already briefed me on the format and content of the course so far - I’m the one who spends most time working with design consultants and we agreed I can use the training on that topic most.
NPD Day 3
Jodie Eastwood of Metropolitan Works spoke about how furniture developers and manufacturers can work more productively with designers by breaking down the different issues and expectations into manageable ideas.
We started by differentiating between conceptual design, commercial design and technical design (e.g. conceptual like the Campana Brothers, commercial like Simon Pengelly and technical like the anonymous designer who makes injection-moulded dustbins). What kind of product are you planning — therefore who do you want to brief for the design?
Then we moved on to the design project structure. This was very useful advice — the sort of training you think you already know, but it underlines how easy it is to stray from these intelligent project structures and allow things to get ad-hoc. The whole course group spent a while discussing the balance between creative freedom and hitting the brief on target. How much leeway should a designer get, and how much restraint should the client require? It’s a fuzzy issue and it’s great to discuss it with people who really understand both sides of the dilemna. We also discussed what motivates designers and how to bring out the best in them by learning how to be a ‘good’ client.
Finally, before the morning session finished, we focused on brief writing and we looked at the specific pieces of information a designer should need, in order to fulfil it and come back with usable concept drawings on schedule. We talked about production costs and margins and went down an interesting sidetrack to debate the merits of loss-leaders in the product range.
We broke for lunch. Then this happened…
Over the last two days I attended the first two parts of a pilot programme on New Product Development at the London Metropolitan University. It is a module style course that helps start-ups, furniture designer/makers, and manufacturers pin points weaknesses and develop strengths in their product development. Pli being a company that focuses on effective product development both Christopher and I jumped at the chance to attend the free pilot of this programme.
Day One: Product strategy
We started with an introduction, then quickly moved on to the first module focusing on product strategy. Delivered by Matthew Lewis, from Furniture Works, we went through different elements of product strategy including, market placement and adding value to products. Some of these elements I knew well while others were gems of knowledge that cleared up various confusions I had been “living with” up until now.
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Giraffe Innovation ran a workshop in central London on Tuesday 17 June 08 aimed at helping businesses to understand and improve the carbon footprint of their packaging. Giraffe is one of the organisations behind the WEEE Man and therefore an inspiration for the Reee Chair which Pli has developed with Sprout Design and others. Click the image for more information on this event…
Two of us attended the workshop and we learned a lot about business attitudes to packaging. We have been trying to develop packaging designs that are courier-proof, easily recycled and made from sustainable materials. The information we gained from Giraffe has sent us back to the drawing board in a couple of places but generally speaking it has bolstered our confidence to continue on the route we have chosen.
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A daily digest I received from a design mailgroup highly praised a new phone concept called Morph, which has been recently developed by the mobile giant Nokia. The introductory post went into further detail to prove how breakthrough the concept was: “works with solar energy, calculates the hazardous substances on the apple you’re going to eat, never gets dirty and cleans the dirt around it, the Nokia of the future…”
While it is just one of the features proposed by this interesting concept, the ability to calculate the hazardous substances on the apple one is going to eat has especially caught my attention.
With all due respect to the hard work being put into nanotechnology and similar scientific developments, sometimes I find it impossible not to stand aghast at how they’re being translated into consumer products by designers, in the name of ‘adding value’. It reveals a good deal about the flaws of our civilization—and, in particular, the design profession.
Inspiration posts