Service design becomes integral part of Etteplan’s offering
As a leading engineering house, Etteplan has invested strongly in user experience and service design solutions emphasizing end-usability. Combining engineering with an understanding of a customer’s business and the end-user’s perspective opens up new possibilities, for example, for developing industrial digital solutions and services.
Etteplan specializes in industrial engineering services and embedded systems, the industrial internet (IoT) and technical documentation solutions. Service design expertise at Etteplan centers on its brand Soikea, which it acquired last year. Soikea, established in Jyväskylä, has expanded its operations and opened up a new office in Vallila, Helsinki.
“We wish to be close to our customers and serve our customer base in the capital region better than ever. Our service offering is now an excellent blend of Etteplan’s technology expertise and Soikea’s user-driven knowhow. The merger of service design and engineering expertise makes it possible to carry out better solutions and contributes to our customers’ success,” says Kari Liuska, Etteplan’s Senior Vice President, Embedded Systems and Industrial Internet.
Investing in service design and user experience design guarantees Etteplan a strong competitive edge on the markets. Service design enriches traditional engineering by shifting the focus of design more onto the end user. Service design helps to concentrate on what is essential and to build solutions that are technically viable, easy to use and suit the customer’s business.
“For instance, in user interface design carried out for industrial equipment suppliers, it is important to ensure that the solutions function efficiently in all conditions both from the perspective of the operating employee and the customer’s business. So you have to be able to use them with work gloves, in the dark, in bright sunlight or damp and dusty conditions, for example,” says Soikea’s Vice President Anssi Kuoppala.
Service design boosts business benefits of digitalization
In addition to user interface design, service design is integrated into Etteplan’s industrial digital services and into capturing the possibilities offered by the IoT in a business-driven manner.
“Industry is becoming digitalized at a tremendous rate. Digital solutions and the IoT have enormous potential in maintenance, for example, as equipment automatically transfers data on the need for maintenance and remote control possibilities grow. If we can improve how we glue together customers’ previously separate processes, we can assemble digital maintenance solutions or technical documentation into better service packages or create entirely new services and business models,” says Kuoppala.
He points out that the benefit of service design lies in its approach. A traditional technical perspective steers engineers to consider what and how measurements can be performed, but in terms of business, it is far more important to ask why and what the achievable benefits are.
For further information:
Anssi Kuoppala, Vice President, Soikea, tel. +358 50 522 8698 or anssi.kuoppala@soikea.com
Kari Liuska, Senior Vice President, Embedded Systems and Industrial Internet, tel. +358 40 756 0285 or kari.liuska@etteplan.com
Outi Torniainen, Senior Vice President, Communications and Marketing +358 40 512 1375 or outi.torniainen@etteplan.com
Etteplan in brief
Etteplan provides industrial equipment and facility engineering, embedded systems, IoT (Internet of Things), and technical documentation solutions to the world’s leading companies in the manufacturing industry. Our services are geared to improve the competitiveness of our customers' products and engineering processes throughout the product life cycle. The results of Etteplan’s innovative engineering can be seen in numerous industrial solutions and everyday products.
In 2016, Etteplan had a turnover of EUR 183.9 million. The company currently has more than 2,600 professionals in Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and China. Etteplan's shares are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd under the ETTE ticker. www.etteplan.com
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