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Setting out to find a product

Following a career as an industrial chemist and metallurgist (G)Ivor found himself unemployed for six years from 1992. In his previous jobs he had gained considerable experience of plastics manufacturing including patenting a new process for electro-plating plastics by making them electrically conductive (G).

Thinking of a manufacturing business he could set up he focused on injection moulding ideas. He started by considering parts which companies might sub-contract to him to supply. He knew many companies that might do this from his previous jobs. However, he decided that he would prefer to produce a product of his own. This would best be a one-piece product that could be produced by a small company with very few employees under automated production.

He'd had enough of dealing with lots of employees and was inspired by the story of the man who became very successful after inventing the plastic wall plug for screws. So, he started thinking about a design for a one-piece clothes peg containing no metal parts.

Pegs sell for very little so the ultimate unit cost (G)would be critically important - everything possible would need to be done to keep the cost of manufacture down and volumes of production (G) up.

Metal springs are used in the traditional wooden peg to clamp washing onto the line to dry. However, Ivor's research revealed that 300 people a year were hospitalised in Britain alone as a result of springs flying off their clothes pegs. Also, the steel springs go rusty and this, together with the porous wood, can badly mark the wet clothes. This meant that the central problem of the design was to replace the spring with something plastic, in a one-piece product.

Task 1 - Product Failure

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