“The Design guide helps our designers think about the product as a whole entity instead of a large number of details. In addition, it gives guidance for day-to-day work,” says Roope Eskola, R&D Manager at Raute Corporation.
Raute is a technology company that creates machines for the wood product industry worldwide. The company wanted to improve brand consistency in their product development. Huld was tasked to harmonize and update the physical appearance of Raute products.
The overall target of harmonizing the design principles was to create recognizable Raute products and product lines to strengthen the Raute brand. The task was tackled by creating specific design principles that can be applied to every product in Raute’s product portfolio. Since the product portfolio contains products of varying sizes and shapes, a set of very agile actions were needed.
”The Design guide helps our designers think about the product as a whole entity instead of a large number of details. In addition, it gives guidance for day-to-day work,” says Roope Eskola, R&D Manager at Raute Corporation.
The Design Guideline covers design principles from product line level to single products and components. This ensures coherent product appearance and feel throughout Raute R&D. The guideline also encourages designers to focus on the product as a whole. The guideline defines the design practice that is repeated in every design assignment. The guideline helps, for example, single designers use the correct colors in products so that brand consistency is achieved.
The first product in which the new design principles were implemented was Panel Repair Station R5. Since they received positive feedback from Raute’s employees and customers, the Design Guideline will be applied to the whole range of products. The Guideline will be developed further, and it will evolve and grow along the process.
“The real challenge was to find the actual features that will affect every single product. At the same time, we need to find cost-effective ways to make machines more user-friendly and ways to add the aesthetics that complement the state-of-the-art machinery”, adds Ville Nenonen, industrial designer at Huld.
Raute is a technology company serving the wood products industry worldwide.
Raute’s customers are companies operating in the wood products industry that manufacture veneer, plywood, LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber) and sawn timber. The increasing popularity of renewable raw materials and products, for example in construction, means growth for the wood products industry.
Raute is the global market leader its largest customer sector, the plywood industry, with a 15 to 20 percent market share in the investments. Raute’s position in the LVL industry is also strong, as approximately more than a half of the LVL manufactured in the world is produced with machines supplied by Raute.
Raute’s technology offering covers machinery and equipment for the customer’s entire production process. As a supplier of mill-scale projects Raute is a global market leader both in the plywood and LVL industries. Additionally, Raute’s full-service concept includes technology services ranging from spare parts deliveries to regular maintenance and equipment modernizations. Typical aspects of project-focused business are sensitivity to cyclical economic fluctuations and poor predictability of timing.