Honeywell | Iterative design

Honeywell are a Fortune 100 company that invents and manufactures technologies to address tough challenges linked to global macro trends such as safety, security, and energy. With more than 127,000 employees worldwide, Honeywell has an unrelenting commitment to quality and delivering results in everything they make or do. Honeywell is the leading supplier of domestic heating and combustion controls in the UK.

The Business Need

4c Design were asked by Honeywell to reconsider the design of their T100 Thermostatic Radiator Valve handwheel. These valves are used on the vast majority of central heating radiators: in fact it is fair to say that you are likely to be be just a few metres from one right now.

Our Activities and Deliverables

With such a high volume product, we quickly realised that subtle design improvements were needed since the intention was to directly replace the existing product and the new design had to be instantly recognisable as the Honeywell brand. 4c studied the existing T100 product and combined our findings with our knowledge of current design trends to identify a range of modifications that improved the look, feel and function of the product. This enabled us to develop a range of new design concepts for the T100 which we presented to Honeywell as concept sketches. We modelled the selected concept using Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools and Honeywell’s engineers then took our model forward into detail engineering to suit their production facility.

The Result

Our new design has been put into production by Honeywell and become their new generation of radiator valve handwheel. Does the new design look similar to the old one? Yes it does. However, we know that the new T100 uses less material and has larger, clearer text. It feels a little softer in the hand too, because the ribs on the outside have slightly curved edges – subtle changes to improve an already successful product. Since this project we have continued to work with Honeywell in Germany and the Czech Republic.

• Concept development
• Industrial design
• Mechanical engineering