Listen to customers – don’t re-invent the wheel

, based on feedback from patients and carers. Dean Palmer reports Halifax-based medical equipment manufacturer Sidhil has taken a leap ahead of its competitors by completely re-thinking its design philosophy and processes, resulting in a new range of community care beds. The new Aqualite beds were delivered to market in half the time it normally takes the firm to launch traditional beds – just nine months from initial design sketches to first-off production. Sidhil designs and manufactures a diverse range of medical equipment. Its main source of revenue comes from hospital, nursing home and community care beds, but it also sells hospital trolleys, cabinets, first aid boxes, scooters and powered wheelchairs. There are 100 employees at the Halifax site, around 50 in manufacturing-related activities and a design team of six. The company, which is owned by the Siddall and Hilton group, turns over £9m a year. As Sidhil’s product development manager Tim Wright explains: “We’re a relatively small manufacturing firm in a very competitive sector. The competition was flooding the market with a wide range of products and we just couldn’t compete. So when it came to launching our new set of community care beds, we decided to have a complete design re-think. Our objectives were to research precisely what both the patient and the NHS staff wanted, and to create a wish list of new design features. We also wanted a very flexible design.” Wright, who was recruited by Sidhil from a furniture manufacturer, headed up the new design project and was responsible for design aesthetics. The project began in September 2001. He continues: “I spent some months with our marketing manager visiting exhibitions, roadshows and customers asking them exactly what they wanted from a community care bed. These days, tenders from the NHS involve more direct contact from the hospital staff – the surgeons and nurses who actually use, clean and specify new equipment.” It sounds obvious, but Wright is adamant that many medical equipment manufacturers have not been listening to the wishes of their customers – the NHS staff and the patient. “For the new community care bed, we really focused the design on the patient and the carer, so we ended up collecting wish lists from both,” adds Wright. And the feedback Sidhil received from the carers and patients was that the bed should be easy to assemble; easy to wash down (to meet infection control regulations); durable and long-lasting; and more aesthetically pleasing. This last point was picked up by district nurses who were receiving complaints from home-based patients who didn’t want the beds in their home because it reminded them of being in a hospital bed again! In addition to this, Sidhil realised that the design would have to compete with cheaper imports and would therefore need to include a number of innovative, superior design features. Wright adds: “Our existing bed frames were being cleaned with either hot water and bleach or harsh chemicals. The bed wasn’t designed for this and so some customers complained that beds were rusting. Beds were also cleaned down in low pressure, high volume water jet washing machines and had similar problems. Such machines run for seven minutes at a temperature of 65°C. The beds simply were not designed to withstand this type of environment.” Wright’s team then sat down to try to work out how they could improve the overall design, soften the look of the bed, create more features and challenge existing materials. “Our first design step was getting the aesthetics right. I sketched out some ideas and passed them to the design engineers who told me if they were actually workable. Linking the aesthetics to engineering reality if you like. “The existing mattress platform was very difficult to clean and had too much surface area. The headboard and footboard were made from metal, chipboard or MDF, which was no longer acceptable. I wanted to get more plastic into the overall design if possible.” Plastic sourcing problems Wright then decided to approach one of Sidhil’s existing suppliers, Barkston Plastics in Leeds, for help in sourcing a new plastic for the headboard, that was capable of taking a wood grain effect, was also hot water and chemical resistant and lightweight. Barkston had no polypropylene that fitted this criteria, and after several months of trying to track down a suitable supplier (through another UK-based material supplier, VTS Plastech), Barkston eventually sourced some suitable plastic from a Japanese firm who could print thin wood grain effect film onto plastic sheets. Other design improvements were made. The bed, which breaks down into four main sections – the headboard, footboard, mattress head section and mattress foot section – has been improved by a new injection moulded fitting which eases assembly and prevents ingress of water to the metal frame tubing. Sidhil beds are normally assembled using a handwheel and male spigot that hold the metal tubing of the bed frame together. It could take one person up to 30 minutes to assemble. Says Wright: “We found some suitcases that used a clasp to hold the two parts of the case together. We did some more research and found that racing car designers were using similar clasps to hold body panels together. We contacted the clasp supplier [Protex in France] and although the parts weren’t cheap, it enabled us to design a clasp that meant we could assemble the bed in under two minutes.” Sidhil also designed a new seating position for the patient. When the backrest on the bed is moved upwards, the patient pushes down the bed and experiences compression forces in the groin area. A unique design has solved this problem. Now, as the backrest moves up, part of the seating area pivots downwards, improving comfort for the patient and also alleviating the compression force factor. “We also didn’t want to make lots of prototypes, so we used 3D modelling software [from Solidworks] to check our designs. We used rendering to demonstrate the bed to potential clients. It’s a very useful sales and marketing tool for us.” Only two physical prototypes were made, so the time to market was cut in half. “We used to use drawing boards, but you can’t present your ideas easily to suppliers and customers like this.” The Aqualite was launched in June 2002 at a medical exhibition. “Competitors were stunned and shocked that we had a bed that broke all the design boundaries,” says Wright. His message to design engineers is, “Don’t keep re-inventing the wheel. Look at other industries for design ideas and see if you can transfer this design technology to your products.”