Contract furniture design: an in-depth analysis to develop a competitive collaborative virtual environment

Contract Furniture market is a transversal business involving different types of products for diverse contexts of use representing an increasing competitive solution for Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Although the well-known opportunities, contract furniture represents a quite unexplored field of research in terms of design methods and supporting tools. Collaboration in the contract cluster and web-enabling technologies, design automation and virtual prototyping of custom solutions are only a small set of relevant topics to be faced. In this context, the present paper investigates contract furniture by an in-depth analysis of AS-IS processes followed by 17 Italian companies operating in hospitality and retail and varying in size, skill, ICT expertise, organization and core business. Main research findings regard the formalization of contract furniture design processes, enabling technologies and main research challenges that need to be overcome and the definition of a TO- BE process model supported by an innovative web- based platform exploiting virtual prototyping techniques to enhance collaboration, process sustainability, negotiation and in general contract lifecycle management. The work contributes to improve a competitive sector that strongly differs from traditional product design and manufacturing, architecture and complex research projects involving multiple actors to achieve a common goal.