Today we are sharing some hacks for one more amazing IKEA piece, and it’s Poang chair. as always, the chair is a find example of a practical and stylish seating. Layer-glued bent beech frame gives comfortable resilience, the cover is easy to keep clean as it is removable and can be machine washed. To sit even more comfortably and relaxed, you can use the armchair together with a Poang ottoman. A variety of seat cushion designs makes it easy to change the look of your POÄNG chair and your living room. The high back provides good support for your neck.DIY IKEA Poang Chair CoversNow, what are the ways to hack it? First of all, changing covers if they are spoilt or just don’t match your interior. Here you’ll need some sewing skills. You will need three pieces of fabric- 71”x27”, 36”x23” and 12”x23”, of course, of your choice to match the décor. First, start off by sewing the three pieces together, making sure to sew the right sides together. They’re not the same widths, so just make sure to center the pieces.
Next, hem both ends by folding over the fabric 1/2″ and sewing in a straight line. Next, with the fabric lying right side up, fold the longer piece (36” long side) over, 10” past the edge. Then, fold the shorter piece over (12” long side) over, 3” past the edge. Start in the middle of one of the sides, and pin the edges together. The easiest way is to pinch the fabric together and pin as you go. When you get to the ends, just keep the line the same, leaving about a 2 inch excess on the top piece. After both sides are pinned, it’s time to sew the last two lines! Start about an inch from the end, and end about an inch before hitting the end of the fabric as well. The corners can be tucked in after you’re done, allowing for that seamless look. Flip that baby right-side out, and you’re ready to stuff in the seat cushion! The envelope opening will go under the seat cushion and out of sight. After you’ve put the cushion back on the chair, simply tuck the fabric into the two creases at the back of the seat and head cushion.
Other DIY IKEA Poang chair HacksThere are more creative ways to hack the chair: you can make a double Poang to share it with someone, add an armrest or turn it into a gamer’s chair. Wanna know how to make all these metamorphosis? Read the tutorials below!“For us, good design is the right combination of form, function, quality, sustainability and a low price. We call it ‘democratic design’, because we believe good home furnishing is for everyone. It’s why we’re constantly exploring smarter, thriftier ways to do things.” – IKEA Website With revenue of over 29 billion euros in 2014, 315 stores in 27 countries, 9,500 product types, and 147,000 employees, IKEA Group is one of Sweden’s best-known companies. IKEA designs, manufactures, and supplies quality furniture at low prices to make it accessible to the majority of people. IKEA’s furniture products are designed to be sleek and minimalist, and manufactured to be easy to assemble and maintain. IKEA is a great example of a company that effectively aligns it business model and operating model.
In order to deliver on its customer promise of providing quality furniture at affordable prices, IKEA relies on its value chain to optimize its production and overhead costs, as exemplified below: In order to reach the shop floor, a product must meet four criteria: affordability, sustainability, good design, and functionality. Interestingly, the design-planning of any product starts by first setting a price at which a product will be sold. As part of that, designers have to select which design elements, raw materials, and production techniques to use in order to reduce production costs. Furthermore, the designers often work on the factory floor, directly interacting with the manufacturing team in order to understand the capabilities and constraints of the manufacturing department, thereby streamlining the design process and minimizing the cost of the prototyping phase. In addition to that, IKEA standardizes the production processes by using a limited selection of raw materials across the product ranges and it uses the same base design for different products (example: the chairs from the PELLO series have the same base design as chairs from the POÄNG chairs).
This level of standardization results in lower rates of defect and scrap, therefore less waste and cost. IKEA has over 50,000 SKUs; in order to relieve the challenge of product variability, IKEA relies on extensive forecasting, and usually planning production five years in advance. Similar to Toyota’s Heijunka practice, IKEA relies on long-term planning to evenly balance production volumes across its network of more than 1,000 third-party manufacturers. As we learned in the TOM course, spreading out production demand allows for suppliers to have a uniform cycle time which ultimately leads to lower production costs per unit. Furthermore, with the help of an Advanced Planning and Scheduling software, IKEA allocates production to suppliers based on each supplier’s production capacity and raw material availabilities. After productions, the products are transported to a network of 47 IKEA-owned, highly-automated distribution centers located in 17 countries. In order to optimize on warehousing and transportation requirements, the finished products are tightly packed into flat packages.
This type of packages makes the finished goods easy to transport (leading to decreased transportation costs) and easy to store (leading to decreased warehousing costs). After customers browse the shop floor and select the items to purchase, they head to the store’s warehouse to retrieve the packages themselves. Because the customers are responsible for picking up their packages, IKEA does not have to hire labor that would otherwise assume such a responsibility. This helps drive down IKEA’s labor cost. Consumers play another role in IKEA’s low-cost strategy. Because the customers are responsible for transporting the furniture out of the store and assembling it, IKEA further saves on labor, shipping and overhead costs associated with furniture assembly and delivery. Overall, I think IKEA effectively manages several key elements of its value chain from design-process to its retail stores, and it has access to customer’s demand patterns. With this information flow and control from one end of the supply to the other, IKEA is able to smoothen the bullwhip effect that other firms typically experience.