D+I’s formula for success

Certification + collaboration + Innovation = Global competitiveness 

Design + Industry (D+I) specialise in the development of high-tech medical, scientific, business and consumer products, with services covering inception and research, right through the different stages of development, and into production.

According to D+I’s Founder, Murray Hunter, “Design + Industry is Australia’s largest and leading product design and development consultancy.”

“With a team of over 50 specialist designers and engineers, and offices in both Sydney and Melbourne, we pride ourselves on creating human solutions to complex problems. We challenge every convention to develop ground-breaking ideas and turn them into compelling products. We rise to literally any challenge, designing and engineering solutions where there is no room for error. We make large, complex products look stunningly beautiful and perform perfectly, all under tight regulatory constraints,” said Hunter.

Re-inventing the Wheel

With their leading-edge approach to manufacturing, it is little wonder that D+I boasts an impressive array of products, clients and projects. Their team developed the cockpit layout for the Deepsea Challenger submersible that sent director James Cameron to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world’s oceans. No mean feat, D+I collaborated with pilots, oceanographers and medical specialists to understand and anticipate risks, incorporate human behaviour variables, and overcome the significant engineering challenges.

They even re-invented the wheel. In collaboration with Concourse Golf, D+I designed ‘Smart Wheels’—the world’s first self-propelled wheels that deliver both powered mobility and precision control to anything to which they’re attached.

Not surprisingly then, D+I have won over 170 awards for design and engineering excellence. These local and international awards acknowledge their ability to deliver innovative solutions for global markets. In fact, approximately 30% of D+I’s work is exported overseas—delivering Australian design expertise to the world—and 95% of all products developed by D+I are produced for commericalisation.

ISO certification for medical devices

D+I was recently certified to ISO 13485:2016 for Medical devices, an achievement of which Hunter is justifiably proud. “Certification to ISO 13485 is extremely difficult to achieve. It took us four years to finalise our certification,” said Hunter.

This certification has seen D+I work closely with several partners to develop cutting-edge medical products. “We are now working with partners such as Genesys Electronics Design and Circuitwise Electronics Manufacturing on medically certified products. We focus on the design of the product, while our partners provide cutting edge electronics.”

“We’re working with these certified manufacturers to bring new devices into production in Australia—large, complex medical devices that can easily compete with those coming out of China. We are clawing back some of the manufacturing work that has left Australian shores in recent years. In particular, we’re focused on low volume, complex assemblies that are too difficult to complete off-shore; it is much easier to complete these types of projects around the corner, where we can oversee quality control.”

Technology Leadership Through Collaboration

“With these combined capabilities—our expert industrial designers and the best partners in electronics—our products are highly competitive on the global stage,” said Hunter.

 “We also regularly collaborate with incubators, which is where the start-up companies are coming through. We are part of the education and training process, often providing advice and mentoring to start-ups and, if required, help take their products through into development. Universities are also fantastic partners; they have the specialist skills and capabilities that are often essential to our projects. We regularly bring together our clients, university teams and our experts to deliver the best outcome.”

An important aspect of technology leadership for D+I is bringing together a range of collaborators. This way, D+I becomes a think-tank, an innovation hub that sparks interesting outcomes—whether these outcomes are exploiting a traditional technology in a new way, or creating an entirely new product.