The Brief
Extend the brand offering globally by solving for a greener way of cooking food.
Agnisumukh means the “friendly face of fire” in Sanskrit and is the dreamchild of the passionate entrepreneur, Mr. Hari Rao. Agnisumukh manufactures Flameless cooking systems and commercial kitchen equipment that is smokeless, utilizing radiant heat technology to help them cook food in a healthy eco-friendly way. Their technology is patented and has far and wide applications with gas fuels. They are also the first company to adhere to 15 of the 17 UN Sustainable development goals 2020 goals and dreamt of recreating the uniform heat and cooking that is achieved in a traditional charcoal oven.
This project is the property of Agnisumukh Pvt Ltd. Any distribution or publishing of this content without prior approval is prohibited. Agnisumukh and Analogy have shared a long trustworthy relationship and have provided explicit approval to showcase the work and effort we put in.
CLIENT
Agnisumukh Pvt Ltd
SERVICES
Focussed Market Research
Design Language
Concept Generation
Design Engineering
Product Architecture
Visualization
Prototyping
Production Support
YEAR
India's Best Design Award 2017
Singapore Design Award 2018-19
YEAR
2017-18
2018-19
Introducing
The commercial Kitchen
A professional chef in a commercial kitchen whether it was a small one or a 5-star restaurant goes through a similar set of problems. Our stakeholders are identified as chef’s, cooks, and also the maintenance guys who regularly work on the equipment to keep it going.
Intense
Fast Paced
High Heat
Decisive
Multi-Tasking
Multi Cuisine
Empathize
Understanding the Business
Mapping the right problems by observing users in actual environments was key. Our team of designers worked hard to capture their daily habits by spending time in various kitchens where this equipment was installed to understand the environment, the way the cooks used the equipment, and some problems that were not obvious to people using the equipment for a long time. Thanks to Mr. Hari Rao, the founder and the chief of R&D, we were able to gain a lot of insight into different kinds of issues that could elevate an award-winning technology into a global platform and brand.
Clarity on
The Problems to focus on
A typical restaurant kitchen is often a frantic fast-paced environment. Additionally, the inefficiencies of most commercial kitchen equipment in the market space produces a lot of heat. Restaurants experience vastly different cuisine shifts between breakfast to lunch/dinner. These requirements, along with the tight space available in commercial kitchens called for a unique and innovative system that allows users to quickly adapt their workspace to fit the need of the hour. The biggest of these problems is the way the food is cooked. To cook slow and maintain nutrition and taste, radiant heat is the answer and that’s what Agnisumukh is really good at. They needed the brand and product to communicate that to the world.
Inventory
Ergonomics
Credibility
Ecosystem
Solving for
Inventory - A large one.
With a lot of customers with custom requirements, like ITC, Akshaya Patra, the Indian Army, and many such prestigious brands, Agnisumukh were making more than 24 unique SKU’s which resulted in a huge inventory pile up as well as a massive investment in manufacturing and tooling costs. Not to mention redundant efforts in maintenance, assembly, and a large BOM which inevitably raised operational costs.
The Solution
Universal Ecosystem
We were able to use a variety of ideation and design thinking methods to breakdown every application, evaluate priorities, and demand. We created a set of 6 basic blocks which could then be combined to create multiple combinations of products.
Scalable product mix
When we were presented with this problem, we used our skills in building scalable product architectures to create parts that can be reused with the same tooling to create multiple variations of the applications needed. This resulted in better buying choices.
Solving for
Ergonomics
The Kitchen staff spends long hours and with the ergonomics of control interfaces, the height of the appliances and automation features were key to help chefs and cooks make the best use of the product.
The Solution
Adjustable controls
Understanding their pain points through focussed ethnographic studies, we designed the entire range of appliances to have adjustable controls to have varying heights as well as modular surfaces to reach key controls for service and maintenance.
Automated interfaces
To minimise repetative tasks, we were able to help design and introduce the idea of voice commands through Alexa and google home to power the mundane tasks that cooks and chefs could do without. This helped with preparation and half cooking techniques.
Flameless cooking system
Tech Credibility
The client is a pioneer in radiant heat tech and one of the very few who adhere to 15 of the 17 UN SDG goals. This tech provides an environmentally friendly and energy-efficient heating solution across all types of gas fuels. But their existing range of products did not showcase this sophistication on the product side as it was built and had not gone through a clear design process to refine the product range.
The Solution
Design Language
A consistent design language to unite all the different products, forms, and shapes along with materials that indicated function and added a level of sophistication by clearing out visual clutter were critical to establishing a credible-looking and functioning product range.
Scalable configurations
In order to create multiple configurations for various kitchen spaces, ranging from a small 6x4 ft space to a large international brand kitchen, we had to design the burners and the equipment to work with others in the range so scalable configurations could be created for smaller and larger spaces.
Solving for
Increased fuel efficiency from 62% to 78% with low gas pressure to create increased safety features and 30% higher LPG savings to the end consumer.
Solving for
Modular Architecture
One of the main hurdles we faced was a huge number of individual products within the inventory of the brand. When we observed how the products were being used, we found a lot of overlapping function which could be set up as an ecosystem and grouped together to reduce the number of SKU’s.
The Solution
Reduce the number of SKU's
Through a thorough iterative process, we were able to find and group functionalities of a similar nature to create modular attachments and reduce the number of SKU's that were being manufactured as individual products. The attachments were designed to work with 3 main cooking bases that housed modular burners to fit a variety of scenarios. This created a reduced cost on inventory and also in tooling and manufacturing, while increasing a wide set of expandable features.
