Product Evolution: Zuri Chairs

Engineering

Entrepreneurship

Quotes

  • "Too Few Engineers, Too Many MBAs!" Guts pg 157

  • "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine." Alan Turing

  • "Your only limitation is your mind." Bruce Lee

Geek Product Evolutions

When I saw these Zuri barstool chairs online, I appreciated the beauty and curvature of a continuous/organic design. When they arrived, I was pleasantly pleased how well they were packaged. As I opened them up, and assembled everything was as it should be. Over time I started to notice scratches on the wooden floor which seemed weird at first. Then I started finding little pieces of plastic, and I was confused as to their origin. One day I decided to flip the chairs around only to find that the plastic interface between the chair metal structure and the floor was coming apart. Then, I noticed that the plastic being used is very brittle. So I decided to consider how I would improve & evolve the existing design or manufacturing process in a low cost manner for the company as if I was part of their internal engineering group. Why? It is easy to identify an "opportunity" to improve a product (itch), now it can be a challenge at times to provide a solution to evolve the product.

Opportunity

Geek-IE Challenge: Interface plastic between metal of the bottom of the chair and floor results in the damage to the protective plastic interface

Functional Requirements

1) Low cost solution
2) Minimal tooling change none if possible
3) Take material and volume considerations
4) Off the shelf solutions preferred for rapid implementation

Disclosure: This is a product that I purchased, and during usage noticed an opportunity to evolve the design. This is only for educational purposes.

Proposed Solution

The plastic piece is made from plastic that is brittle; thus, the material should be change. The first thing I tried to do is to put little non-scratch little pads staggered at 30 degrees, that didn't work. So I know about rubber extrussion and that they sell it really cheap. One day working at a friends garage I ran into an strip of rubber extrussion from a previous project. So I tried and it works.

Next Steps

The next step is to explore the cost of the elastomer rubber. The durometer to consider may be around a shore A hardness between 60 and 70. The strip that I used was one that I found running around a friends basement.

Functional Requirements

1) Cost of Production at volume
2) Quick Analysis cutting angled to close circle
3) Impact on Product overall cost