{"id":9182,"date":"2018-03-22T06:32:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T13:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/?p=9182"},"modified":"2018-03-22T07:48:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T14:48:51","slug":"lixil-design-focus-american-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/lixil-design-focus-american-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"LIXIL Brings Heightened Design Focus to American Standard and Its Other Brands"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you infuse iconic houseware brands with fresh style? By investing heavily in innovation, cross-pollinating the talents of your team, and finding the right tools to free up your designers\u2019 creativity. That\u2019s what bathroom-fixture titan American Standard and its parent company LIXIL are doing with their new design center in New York City<\/a>\u2014and by using Fusion 360.<\/p>\n

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A Worldwide Portfolio Centered on Innovative Design<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Many consumers aren\u2019t familiar with LIXIL, a top player in construction materials formed by the merger of five Japanese businesses. Over the past decade, it has expanded beyond Japan by acquiring American Standard in Asia and the U.S. and GROHE in Germany, as well as the luxury brand DXV. Many people associate American Standard with sinks and toilets, but the LIXIL portfolio covers all categories of kitchen and bathroom fittings and fixtures, from ceramics to brassware.<\/p>\n

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LIXIL has also put a big emphasis on design. Jean-Jacques L\u2019Henaff, VP of design at LIXIL Americas, points out that the industry has spent 150 years making its goods the same way, \u201cmelting and casting metal to make faucets, or firing clay to make toilets.\u201d LIXIL is shaking that up with its innovative designs, including the ActiClean self-cleaning toilet and the remote-operated Spectra Touch showerhead.<\/p>\n

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Tight Design Timetables Year-Round<\/strong><\/h2>\n

L\u2019Henaff\u2019s team continually develops new product designs that are brought to the market during \u201claunch windows\u201d every April, July, and November. He laughs when he adds that \u201csometimes the timeline is reduced quite dramatically,\u201d especially to meet the needs of large retailers. For example, when a certain home-improvement giant needs a new product on the shelf in September, LIXIL must have it in the warehouse by the end of July. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly tight production cycle,\u201d L\u2019Henaff says.<\/p>\n

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Members of the global design team are spread across design centers in New York, Tokyo, D\u00fcsseldorf, and Bangkok. Individuals spend most of their time on specific product categories and for specific brands. For example, Greg Reinecker has spent the past year working mostly on showerheads and valves for American Standard and DXV, while Jacob Nitz has focused on GROHE faucets.<\/p>\n

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The team also sometimes bridges categories to bring different design concepts and aesthetics to the work. As Reinecker puts it, \u201cWhen you do something collaborative, you get these [creative] facets from each different group or segment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Using Fusion 360 to Accelerate Iterative Design<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"The designers have found that Fusion 360 gives them more flexibility and speed during the design process. Reinecker says he now has more freedom: \u201cGenerally, I was using ProE before. I think with Fusion 360, there\u2019s just more of a free-flow aspect to it, where you\u2019re thinking less about the tool, and more about what you\u2019re designing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As he puts it, using Fusion 360 brought the CAD experience back to the designer\u2019s side, rather than the engineering side. After sketching out ideas by hand or digitally with Autodesk SketchBook, he will get right into Fusion 360 to bring those sketches to life. Whereas previously his designs were driven more by parametric numbers, now he can \u201ccreate designs without feeling so constrained.\u201d\"\"<\/p>\n

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For his part, Nitz says, \u201cI probably get into CAD a little quicker than most designers. I\u2019ll do some quick sketches, and then I like to get into it.\u201d He was an early adopter of T-splines in Rhino, and was used to working in that application alongside Solidworks. Fusion 360\u2019s combination of parametric design and T-splines for sculpting has streamlined his workflow nicely.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI would say it\u2019s definitely sped up my ideation process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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L\u2019Henaff adds that \u201cI don\u2019t think people realize how complex and how sculptural a faucet can be.\u201d It\u2019s also a very technical product, so \u201cit\u2019s not an easy product to design.\u201d From his perspective, good design at LIXIL is \u201creally a balance between right brain and left brain.\u201d Fusion 360 addresses all of those complexities. \u201cIt\u2019s really making a big difference,\u201d L\u2019Henaff says.<\/p>\n

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Taking on New Challenges in Product Design<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The team is looking forward to using Fusion 360 to design products that will be 3D-printed in metal, a technology whose costs are coming down. Reinecker, for instance, is using the software to develop the \u201cvery organic form\u201d of hand showers. \u201dA lot of our products are chrome,\u201d he adds, \u201cand when you chrome something, you can see every little detail.\u201d Any flaws in the design will be magnified in the manufacturing stage.<\/p>\n

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Keeping that reality in mind, L\u2019Henaff says that his goal is to preserve the team\u2019s beautiful designs, rather than having them adapted\u2014and potentially diminished\u2014to meet engineering needs. To achieve that, he puts a premium on tools that \u201callow creativity to flourish and<\/strong> make that transition to engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He adds: \u201cThat\u2019s what Fusion 360 is helping us do today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how LIXIL is investing heavily in innovation and how some of the design team is using Fusion 360 to help free up their creativity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":894,"featured_media":9225,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","dhig-theme--light"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLIXIL Brings Heightened Design Focus to American Standard and Its Other Brands - Fusion Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how LIXIL is investing heavily in innovation and how some of the design team is using Fusion 360 to help free up their creativity.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/lixil-design-focus-american-standard\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LIXIL Brings Heightened Design Focus to American Standard and Its Other Brands - 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