What the heck is this thing? Read on
Here's an example of how a nuts-and-bolts industrial design firm—one that you've probably never heard of—can integrate with other businesses to achieve fantastic, if quiet, financial success designing products that most consumers have never heard of or seen.
The design firm in question is the 62-person Design Concepts, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Design Concepts was contracted by Diversey, a company in the decidedly unsexy business of keeping factories clean. Diversey noticed that the tracks of their clients' air conveyors—overhead systems used for moving bottles across the factory floor—were absurdly difficult to clean out. The process requires workers get up on ladders and scrub down every inch of the conveyor's internal track using rags and a spray bottle.
Diversey turned to Design Concepts, who then developed the ZipClean robot you see above. It increases the cleaning speed by a factor of 200, meaning less downtime for the production line, and obviates the need for workers to get up on ladders (a process that traditionally comes with a percentage of accidents and injuries). Check out how it works:
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