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Register nowConcept presentation, design proposals, prototype construction, tooling, test and correction phase, pre-series, pilot series, until it’s finally ready for series production – product development at Klöber is a clearly defined process. However, it’s flexible enough to allow a flow of new ideas to be channelled in at any point. Although the detailed solutions seem highly unpredictable at the start, it’s certain that everything will function according to plan by the time it’s all finished, and sitting in the workplace will have been reinvented once more.
The “product innovation session” is where sales meets design, where design and development meets market research. Discussion is used to stimulate ideas and impulses for different approaches and develop them further. There might be 1000 ideas to begin with, and of these they pick out 100, and then thrash out the detail for just ten. At the end of the process, two or three specific projects will be left, and they are the ones that are implemented.
The subsequent “kick-off” is managed by an interdisciplinary team of engineers and colleagues from the workshop and prototype build team. The priority is working together to find a solution. For this phase, various 3D models are made up as specified by the designer. You see, the prototypes are created in cooperation with the design department. The Klöber design philosophy is characterised by an intermeshing of form and function. For new mechanisms, operating principles and components Klöber relies on support from specialists – so that products can be developed in-house from the inside outwards, with the consequence that a Klöber is superior in terms of both technology and looks.
At Klöber it usually takes two years from start to finish for a completely new product to become available. During the development phase, components, assemblies and models are constantly passing through the test lab for analysis. This saves time and allows the product design to be optimised on an ongoing basis. As soon as a newly developed chair goes into production, it meets all the legal requirements – for example norms, directives and recommendations – but also in-house standards and specifications.
Next comes what we call the pre-series, which serves as a test run. Employees in different departments are given the new chair to try out so that corrections can be made. The pilot series on the other hand goes outside the company: selected testers, such as dealers, are given the chair to test as well. They work through a checklist to evaluate the chair and more improvements follow. The entire correction phase takes around a year. But after that the chair’s perfect, and mass production can start.