CASE STUDY 2
Encon Safety Products - Aquarion Case Study

Background
Encon Safety Products, a manufacturer of safety equipment such as emergency eyewash stations, showers, safety glasses, etc., has had a self-contained gravity fed eyewash station on the market for over 20 years.  This product is basically a reservoir that holds enough preserved eyewash solution to provide adequate flushing of the eyes for a period of 15 minutes.  The biggest disadvantage to this product is that it must be emptied and cleaned every 90 days.  This directly attributes to the overall cost of ownership of this product.  In addition, this product, along with most competitive models, is very industrial in appearance.  Finally, there were a number of patents on competitive products that had to be considered throughout the development of the product.

Project Goal
The goal of the project was to develop a self-contained eyewash station that would have a shelf-life of two years, thus dramatically reducing the maintenance costs associated with the product.  In addition, the product was to be designed to be more aesthetic so that it could be put into less-industrial environments, such as labs, schools, etc.

Project Scope
Point Innovation researched the field and came up with a design that met the criteria set forth by the client.  The resulting product design was developed to such a degree that several extensive patents regarding the design and usage of the product were filed.  The key features of the product include the use of single use, preserved saline filled reservoirs.  The design of these reservoirs required research into FDA approved films that are capable of minimizing water vapor transfer over the effective shelf life of the product.  In addition, a number of security features were incorporated into the design. These features ensure that the product will always be ready for use when an emergency arises.  The housing for this product incorporated large scale, injection molded components.  In order to optimize the cost of the production tooling and components, Point Innovation coordinated production with suppliers in Mainland China for the housing and the US for the saline filled bags.

Business Success
This product has recently gone to production and is in the initial stages of distribution.