Godrej Material Handling (GMH) won the prestigious CII Design Excellence Award 2014 in the category Industrial Design for its 3 wheel 1.6 tonne electric forklift. The event was hosted by the CII on 20th November 2014 at India Expo Centre, Noida
Essentially, GMH wanted to extend their range of 3 wheel electric trucks to the next higher capacity – 1.6 tonne. The young design engineers were given the brief that the design of this truck should be for the world market and not only for the local market. The truck had to be good enough for sizeable exports.
This brief led to extensive study of how the customers would use this forklift truck and for which applications. Also, the operator related ergonomics were studied to ensure a high level of operator productivity. With all those findings, the team of design engineers began their design and development journey and in the process developed quite a few assemblies such as wet disk brakes, electro-hydraulic controls, a rear wheel power drive train with power steering and the like. All for the first time in India. The truck therefore had a distinctive stamp of GMH’s developmental capabilities. Needless to say, that the forklift truck does confirm to Indian as well as ISO standards of safety.
As mentioned earlier, a special emphasis was given to the ergonomics of the truck from the point of view of operators productivity and aesthetics. We at Godrej were thrilled to learn that the CII Design Excellence award was conferred upon us in the recognition of our path breaking efforts.
This truck represents a new phase of design at GMH that signals that now on wards their products will be not only highly functional but of superior design as well offering our customers value not hitherto available.
