Client: Promeba
Country: Spain
Sector: Health Assistance
Year of execution: 2006

Strategy >>> Market opportunity
Promeba Company raises us to develop a new emergency evacuation chair. They are chairs that the law obliges to place in ambulances, and are used to evacuate patients from building without elevator.
It is a complex product and the demand is low, therefore production series are short and high price.  The market leader is a product manufactured in the United States that has a proven quality but an excessive price. And that is precisely the business opportunity that Promeba detects. Create a new Chair with similar or better features than the existing one, but at a cost which is expected to be reduced by 50%.

Conceptualization > > > agile and reliable
Due to the nature of the project, it is considered that the user must be in the central axis of the development process. An ergonomic study was conducted in order to get a more convenient, more efficient and a safer chair. Conceptualization tasks were focused on obtaining a lightweight product and easy handling, to achieve an agile product that reduces the reaction time of rescue for the personnel. Fruit of the study of the product cycle use, was also decided to create a collapsible tubular structure that allows you to store the product without losing stability when used. Regarding aesthetic is intended to strike a balance between a strong and agile image by using a benchmarking of related sectors such as strollers for children, golf carts, wheelchairs for disabled people, etc

Development > > >   strength made in Spain
In order to minimize costs, the company decided to work only with materials and processes that the company dominates and outsource only pieces of foam backrest and seat. Structure is constructed from standard tube, and to save manufacturing operations and to win rigidity at the same time, was decided to use castings injected aluminum pieces which act as a link between the tubes. Via parametric software, mobile chair (kinetic analysis) parts were made, detecting the most unfavorable cases and calculating the efforts that the pieces should support under maximum load conditions. Thanks to the 3D was possible to reduce the development times to 4 weeks and the total time until the completion of the prototype just reached 3 months, significantly cutting the time to market.

Implementation > > >   Continuous optimization

The deployment tasks were focused on the continuous advice to the company’s technical department to optimize the product for its serial production. As usual, this is a continuous process which leads to improvement operations, savings in material, improvements in assembly processes, etc. Regarding communication, stimulo generated high quality virtual images to edit promotional material for trade fairs of the sector.

Results

A new product that incorporates important technical solutions to both functional and technical, with an innovative image, and at a price significantly lower than the competition, which leaves PROMEBA in a situation of competitive advantage versus the market:

> It’s a technically advanced product.
> Adapted to the national market.
> Reduced costs by 50%.
> Remarkable increase in demand.

“Stimulo is in charge about all the technical development, this is one of advantatge for PROMEBA of working with Stimulo. We share the same 3D softwares so they know how to optimize the design to streamline the production “

Miquel Manaut. Technical Director. PROMEBA.

Tags: design, development, emergency, engineering, medical