Your studio has grown and evolved rapidly these recent years. What are the reasons for this in your opinion?
"We've been working with the same group of companies over the years or with the same project managers that work for different companies but still retain our services. They know us well and we know them and this system seems to work out for everybody.
This studio is based on team work; we have designers, engineers and technologists. Hadar and I both oversee all the advanced work being done.
We currently have seven industrial designers working for us and two engineers about to join the team. We work on products throughout the various development and manufacturing stages with our designers leading the product development with us.
We also work with several textile designers and people who specialize in two-dimensional design, and there are technologists and people in the workshop. We work on several projects at once.

We are currently working on five large-scale projects with several companies, including a group of entrepreneurs in the field of medicine. Each of the projects is comprised of several smaller projects so basically we're working on 20-30 tasks simultaneously".

Pictures from studio life (in the center wearing a grey shirt- Yonatan Bar Or)

And there is also a workshop...
"We have two workshops here and we also manufacture and produce products...the studio works on the product until the first of the series is manufactured and sometimes until the entire mass-production process in already running"

Where do you conduct the development of medical technologies and the early engineering stages of the product?
"The first stage is technological development and after that we adapt the technology to the users. A large part of the solution is not in the development itself but in adapting it.
There are existing technologies that have been around for years but were never adapted to the needs of patients/clients. Our skill lies in using such technologies and making them applicable. The companies we work with have the professional and/or technological medical know-how. They take care of anything related to the medical and/or technological aspects of development and they finance and market the product. We develop the product and work with them to solve the problems that crop up during the process. We are in constant dialogue with them and we partner with them to develop patents and innovations"

Yonatan takes us on a tour of the studio and workshop -
In the open-planned space of the first floor there are the designers work stations and the models they are working on (this floor also houses an additional mechanical workshop).
We pass the computer 3D design work stations and reach an area where they do their textile work. Here Yonatan presents us with new textiles with unique qualities designed for specific products currently being developed in the studio.
Many of the medical products developed here are attached to various parts of the body and so there is a clear preference for soft and comfortable textiles and biocompatible fabrics suitable for human skin. They also use other soft materials such as different kinds of elastomeric plastic and other combinations of soft and hard materials.

Making models in the studio

Sewing workshop

The average development time for a product is a year (!) beginning with the preliminary sketches and ending with the end product manufactured in the workshop. This is considered a very short period of time and a very fast pace of development (for comparison the average development time needed for medical equipment in the global market is several years). 

So what is their secret?

Is this pace of work and fast development typical of design firms here in Israel?
"Some places abroad also work very quickly but here we combine many skills in one place. The thing that makes us different is the work process. We have garnered quite a lot of experience over the years and today we are very familiar with the details of every stage of work. As soon as you know the method and how to go about it, together with the experience you gain, you can work very fast.
In places that don't concentrate all the skills in one place they have to deal with situations in which one phase of the project has been completed but now they have to wait until another team receives the product, understands the changes made to it and takes on the next phase of developing it. Obviously they must work together and coordinate and this all takes time.

Here in our studio we do everything together and all at once. The designers work on the three-dimensional computer simulations and start to consolidate a form and measurements for the product. At the same time the engineer works on the mechanics and our workers begin building the model for the users. Simultaneously our textile department examines which fabric would be most suitable for the specific function of the product.
We learn about new materials and technologies from various exhibitions around the world. Today you can find many innovative technologies and possibilities that are utterly new to the field of materials and textiles"

You conduct this search for materials and the process of adapting them to the product by yourselves?
"We go and see exhibitions every few months, usually in Germany or the USA. We have also been working closely these many years with global companies that keep us updated and show us any new developments"

The tour of the mechanical workshop reveals that apart from the many different machines typical of any workshop there are also vacuum forming machines and ultrasound welding machines that allow the fusing of synthetic materials using sound waves that create friction and heat and thus weld the various materials together (unlike the fusing of inflatable toys done with high-frequency radio waves).

Yonatan explains that apart from the product development process they do here they are also beginning to actually create the products here. This is a new service and they are just making small series of perhaps a few dozen or a few hundred units. This allows them to speed the process even more and pass on the product to the company for testing faster. They can also pass on the method of manufacture they used in their studio to the company and thus teach them how to make it while adapting it to mass-production (hundreds of thousands of units or more). All of this streamlines the process.

The bottom line is that you design, you provide engineering solutions, you plan the manufacturing process and even manufacture the initial series that will them be mass-produced?
"Correct. Not all of the product we work on go through this entire process but most do. It's important to point out that we don't define the concept for the product but we do define the product itself. Part of this definition is in the actual manufacture of the product"

Is your planning of the manufacturing process relevant only to smaller series and particular methods of manufacture in contrast to larger series that are essentially different?
"No. our planning is certainly directed at that and is adapted for mass-production"

As the manufacturing process is specifically designed for each product the advantage of one company over another is in its ability to simplify the process, speeding and reducing cost of it and maintaining secrecy regarding the details.  As the studio works on medical products Yonatan stresses that they are meticulous about choosing textiles, plastics and adhesives that meet FDA regulations and can be attached to human skin without causing harm, poisoning or irritation.

The tour of the studio continued and after a brief glimpse into the coloring room we reach  a room that holds casting molds and laser cutting machines that allow the very accurate production of identical pieces in a relatively fast pace. Later on we reached a space with CNC processing units and Yonatan shows us various molds that were planned and made right there in the workshop (including the carts and inserts with all their complexity...).

Machining workshop

Designer? Technologist? Manufacturer?

How would you define the role of the industrial designer?
"We adapt technologies to people. If I had to define it I would say that design is action. In the past the artisan specialized in one area but today the designer deals in many mediums- computers, planning, execution, manufacture - so design is a process"

In the past planning the product was subject to the many limitations of industry...
"We still have to work around restrictions and limitations but today we have more opportunities and possibilities and can arrive at the desired results"

What do you think about the innovative new technologies that now exist in the market and how they address the needs of designers and engineers, such as Rapid Prototype? Do you use it?
"We use it a lot but not here in the studio. Most of the pieces are made using the manufacturing methods you've seen so far and we finish them here. The CNC machine provides the highest level of accuracy and real mechanical qualities. When we were just starting out we worked with one machine and today we work with two with both at full capacity.

It's often the case that after having completed the design we develop the packaging as well. And so again - instead of the client having to deal with various aspects of the product we provide a complete solution from start to finish, including how the product will be packaged...the difference between what we do and what happens with industrial mass-production is that in mass-production there's an entire production line adapted to the product and they create huge series. Here we employ the same basic principle and use the same cast but we manufacture the pieces separately"

And what happens if you have, say, an order for 80,000 units of a product you designed...
"I'm not a manufacturer. We basically make products whose functionality, durability and resilience meet every standard, all of the requirements set out for us and all the necessary regulations. We manufacture several preliminary units for the companies we work for up until they begin mass-production (a process that can take up to a year).

AVIAFI by TFLOWMEDIC  / A small wearable medical device. It's strapped on to the shin and meant to improve blood flow to the lower extremities while immobile. Suitable for long flights or many hours of sitting at work or at home. Helps prevent the formation of blood clots due to poor circulation after long periods of immobility.

Safe-t-Mix by Elan / A disposable syringe for self-use. Meant for patients who need to inject themselves on a daily basis for long periods. The syringe includes a mechanism for mixing the powder and fluid to create the solution. The needle is hidden in the syringe capsule and operated by touching it to the skin