Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Teaching production technology – doing more with less

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Product & Industrial Design

How does my design work?” and “How can it be produced?” are the two key technological questions that the industrial design engineer must be able to answer. Looking at the second question, we see that there is still a lot to be gained: 60% of all new products do not enter production as scheduled, with 25% of these products requiring major redesign. In part, this problem can be traced back to industrial design education.

Developing products & services for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)

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Product & Industrial Design

Recent work is re-conceptualizing global poverty as an attractive growth opportunity for firms that can simultaneously alleviate the problem of poverty. The so-called ‘Base of the economic Pyramid (BoP)’, exists of 4 billion people that live on an income of less than $3 a day. Tapping into these overlooked markets will require companies and designers to reconfigure their business and product innovation models.

Designing Breakthrough Bamboo Products from Africa

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Product & Industrial Design

Southern African countries are blessed with abundance of rich non-wood species including bamboo.

Countries like Botswana, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania have most resource-rich ecosystems in the continent. Previous studies have shown that, in these countries, non-wood products are among the diversity of resources that have contributed to the well being of local communities, particularly at household level where resources are used for subsistence and income generation.

A Network for Sustainable Innovation in Africa

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Product & Industrial Design

A major challenge for industry in Africa is to innovate: initiate, or adapt fast enough to changes in the economic and commercial business environment. Doing this in a sustainable way means catering to human needs while maintaining the environmental and natural resources and local communities as a long term pre-condition for human societies.

The relevance of successful and flexible innovative capabilities among industry, knowledge institutes, non-governmental organisations and governments is directly related to this challenge. Key topics are product innovation, process innovation and organizational innovation.

DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).