Michael Bond
State Sales Manager, Zenith Interiors
Zenith Interiors is a wholly Australian owned company that specialises in the design, manufacture and marketing of a wide range of products and services for the commercial furniture industry. As a genuine leader in the industry, ranking in the top three Australian owned suppliers of furniture to the commercial furniture, Zenith is seen as an emerging innovator in Australian workplace product solutions. What makes it so?
Differentiation through design is a key consideration and one of the subjects to be explored at this seminar. Another key factor for Zenith has been for its furniture ranges to be at the forefront of environmental concerns, so much so that the company has been engaged for some time now in finding and employing processes that significantly alter the way their furniture is manufactured.
One such process used when building and designing the Options© workstation culminated in a design that improved environmental efficiency. The design also enabled the company to stay true to its overall manufacturing strategy, which was to do more with less. Options© used significantly less materials than Zenith’s other workstations. Zenith used no toxics, reduced its use of glues, aluminium and steel by as much as possible while its partition and leg assemblies consisted of simple fastening methods.
In wanting to take their environmental evolution to another level again, Zenith collaborated with RMIT University’s Centre for Design, to use the new design decision support tool developed by RMIT. The RAT© assesses the environmental impact from the start of the product’s life (extraction of raw materials for manufacture), through to its use in a workplace and the ‘end of its life’ (i.e. whether it is recycled or dumped in landfill). While the RAT© is not a replacement for, or as accurate as, a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which may cost $A 20,000 – $A 60,000 each to undertake, it is proving extremely useful in modeling potential impact during design and before products go into production.
Matt Bond presents Zenith Interiors and what tools and processes the company uses to differentiate and maintain its market leading position, a position that has seen the company, and its product ranges grow exponentially.
Click here to read the Zenith Interiors / RMIT Centre for Design Business Immersion case study.