Scm Group, world leader in machinery and industrial components, and NiEW, a business design and customer experience company specialising in industry, received acclaimed recognition for the industry and Italian design: the “Maestro Active” human-machine interface project won the “RedDot Award” in the Brands & Communication Design 2019 category.
This prestigious global competition is now in its 65th edition, and the jury recognised the high level of design, innovation and creativity behind the “made in Italy” product following scrupulous assessment of more than 8,000 international projects entered into the different categories.
“Maestro Active”, which had already achieved important recognition in February 2019 for the world of industry and design, with a special mention at the German Design Award, is NiEW’s creation of a concept for the corporate operating system capable of adapting to all the product lines and Scm Group devices, with regard to Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT. Indeed, the objective is to create a single interface across all the Group’s technologies, which not only meets with the most innovative demands of contemporary IT design, but also allows any operator, irrespective of their language, background, culture or professional experience, to have a direct, confident approach with a wide variety of machinery. The interface adapts to the user’s characteristics in terms of language, computer literacy and information complexity, providing recommendations for an effective use of the machine.
“The success of the Maestro Active visual and interaction design project – comments Federico Ratti, Innovation Director at Scm Group – is a demonstration of how much this system can meet user experience demands made by Scm Group’s client companies, operating across the globe in various commodity sectors: from the furniture to the building industry, from the car to aerospace industry, from the nautical industry to the manufacturing of plastics. The aim is to provide our state-of-the-art technologies with exclusive digital systems, to make using the machine even more effective, easier and pleasant, and guarantee a high level of know-how“.
“We are extremely proud of the result achieved with our long-standing partnership with Scm Group; the re-designing of such a complex, important system for the competitiveness of a company could only have been achieved thanks to genuine complicity between the multi-disciplinary skills of researchers, designers and business experts at NiEW and the wealth of technologies experience and market leadership possessed by Scm Group”, declared Daniele De Cia, Founder and President of NiEW srl.
Professor Peter Zec, founder and CEO at Red Dot Award, said: “The Red Dot Award has been one of the largest, most important design competitions in the world for 65 years, and offers designers, agencies and companies the chance to present their excellences in the world of design. I would like to offer my congratulations to the winners for their distinction. Anyone who can make their mark in a fierce, global competition like this one, deserves to feel proud of the results achieved”.
The Red Dot Awards 2019 ceremony was held on the 1st November during a gala evening at the Konzerthaus in Berlin before an audience of around 1,400 international guests. The winning projects will be described in the International Yearbook Brands & Communication Design 2019/2020 which will go on sale world-wide as of 14 November.
The Maestro Active interface was also at the centre of the Inclusive European project case study aiming to develop automation systems for the manufacturing industry which can be configured with the user’s specifications. Systems where the machine manages to adapt to the operator’s skills making the handling experience increasingly more enjoyable and easier and, with an eye to the future, opening up to new scenarios which are currently unimaginable, like the possibility of providing opportunities for disadvantaged people or those with limited physical and cognitive skills.
The project which saw Scm Group as one of the ten partners involved across the EU, is financed by the European Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 programme and was finalised at the end of September 2019.
