Control Techniques’ Commander SK drive range won the Industrial Product Design Award at the DBA’s Design Effectiveness Awards 2006. This is the second award that the general purpose, compact drive has won in 2006. The range consists of eight drives each between 25% and 40% smaller than its predecessor. Ease of use was significantly improved by implementing an easy push button set-up user-interface, unique in this market; now 90% of applications can be set up through the front keypad, which has the ten most common parameters printed on the front of the drives.
Commander SK is ideal in all applications that involve conveying, pumping, moving liquids, solids and compressing gases. In such applications energy efficiencies and productivity improvements often result in a rapid return on project investment.
The judges were impressed by Control Techniques’ decision to put design at the heart of its commercial strategy and commented:
“In an environment where focussing on design might be seen to be gratuitous, this winner stands out as a tremendous example of the positive power that good design can have on a product's market share.”
With a sales increase of 40% and an increase in market share of 1.5%, the Commander SK has more than met Control Techniques’ ambitions for this product.