Service design event scores in Cardiff

Left to right: Paul Thurston (Design Wales), Hugo Raaijmakers (Philips), Mark Hartvelt (Philips), Andie Mudie (Nuaire), Phil Morgan (Aggrelek), Gavin Cawood (Design Wales)

The Design Wales Service Design Programme held a succesfull event at the end of last week with 80 delegates registered to take advantage of the excellent facilities at the Cardiff City football ground.

With an emphasis on demonstarting how manufacturing companies can realise the benefits of moving from being simply product led to understanding the needs of their end users in the form of developing innovative services, the event included a key note presentation from Philips Design alongside Nuaire of Caerphilly and Aggrelek of Swansea.

Philips Design employ over 450 designers and engineers in studios around the World, primarily serving the product design and innovation needs of Phillips and its key partners. Established almost a century ago Phillips have grown as an innovative but product/manufacturing-led business, but over the last 30 months they have been undertaking a process of cultural change (led by the most senior management) to shift towards a greater service-led approach that is transforming their business model and broadening opportunities as they explore working with new partners and exploit developments in communications technology.

The presentation by was given by Hugo Raaijmakers (Creative Director for Service Deisgn) and Mark Hartvelt (New Business Director), both based in Amsterdam, who have been given the task of integrating this new approach into Philips. The story of how Philips are progressing towards being much more service-led in their drive to deliver innovative offerings to their end users has not necesarily moved them away from being manufacturers but changed fundamentally how they work with external partners, make use of existing and emerging communications platforms and where value can be found in their business models. Rather than being a threat to manufacturing, seeing how such an established business are shifting towards being more service-led should act as an inspiration for how the sector can find long-term sustainability.

How such a shift is possible in a small and a medium sized business was demonstrated by complimentary presentations from Phil Morgan (MD) of Aggrelek and Andy Mudie (Marketing Director) of Nuaire. Aggrelek and Nuaire are two of “The 90” businesses the Service Design Programme are seeking to work with over the three years in order to help build upon their manufacturing expertise by raising awareness and application of service design.