New Product Development
brief
At the time of the original meeting, Turner Access controlled less than one percent of the aluminium scaffolding tower market. In addition to this, their range of products was extremely diluted, and convoluted. We set the brief to establish a consolidated product which represented innovation, which would help to regain some market share. This was a driving factor in the rest of the project as the vast majority of towers on the market have very similar features, regardless of the brand.
Client Handling
The team at Turner access was also governed by a design engineer who had personal association with the current designs, making any innovation introduced by ourselves instantly challenged. This exposed me to my first ‘real’ situation of client, and account handling. This was a major factor in the development of the product, and made it more difficult to gain the trust of the client. We developed this trust through extensive meetings and discussion regarding the risk and reward associated with disrupting the current market.
The solution
t was important to identify an area of the tower to focus the efforts of innovation. After visiting the site and assembling a tower ourselves, it was clear that the platform of the tower needed the most development. This was updated with a reduced mass frame, new GRP top-sheet, a lightweight trapdoor, and new hooks. GRP spigots were also developed to make the assembly of the frame components, full-proof, and removed the jamming hazard. These changes represented the disruption that Turner Access required to reclaim some of that market share and improve their customer base.
