Dyson (company)
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| Type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1993 |
| Founder(s) | Sir James Dyson |
| Headquarters |  Malmesbury, Wiltshire, UK |
| Number of locations | manufactured: Malaysia |
| Key people | Sir James Dyson: Managing director, Deirdre Dyson, Deputy managing director |
| Industry | Domestic appliances |
| Products | Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, hand dryers (See products listing) |
| Revenue | ▲ GB £514 million (2006) |
| Profit | ▲ GB £115 million (2006) |
| Employees | 1,679 (2005) |
| Website | http://www.dyson.co.uk |
Dyson is an appliances manufacturer with factories in Malaysia. Its main products are vacuum cleaners that use cyclonic separation. The founder, James Dyson, used centrifugal particle separation after finding that to restore suction, the dust bag in his vacuum cleaner needed to be replaced – even when it was not full.
Initially manufactured in England, vacuum cleaner production has since moved to Malaysia.
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[edit] History
In 1979, James Dyson bought what was then the top of the range vacuum cleaner. He became frustrated with how it rapidly clogged and began to lose suction so he emptied the bag to try to restore suction but this had no effect. Dyson opened the bag and noticed a layer of dust inside, clogging the fine material mesh. He resolved to develop a better vacuum cleaner that worked more efficiently.
During a visit to a local sawmill, Dyson noticed how the sawdust was removed from the air by large industrial cyclones. He conjectured the same principle might work, on a smaller scale, in a vacuum cleaner. He dismantled his machine and fitted it with a cardboard cyclone. On cleaning the room with it, he found it picked up more than his bag machine. This was the world’s first vacuum cleaner without a bag.
According to @Issue: The Journal of Business and Design (vol. 8, no. 1), the source of inspiration was in the following form:
In his usual style of seeking solutions from unexpected sources, Dyson thought of how a nearby sawmill used a cyclone—a 30-foot (9.1 m)-high cone that spun dust out of the air by centrifugal force—to expel waste. He reasoned that a vacuum cleaner that could separate dust by cyclonic action and spin it out of the airstream would eliminate the need for both bag and filter.
Dyson developed 5,127 Dual Cyclone prototype designs between 1979 and 1984. The first prototype vacuum cleaner, the G-Force, was built in 1983, and appeared on the front cover of Design Magazine the same year.[1] In 1986, a production version of the G-Force was first sold in Japan for the equivalent of £2,000[2].
In 1991, it won the International Design Fair prize in Japan, and became a status symbol there.
Using the income from the Japanese licence, James Dyson set up the Dyson company, opening a research centre and factory in Wiltshire, England, in June 1993. His first production version of a dual cyclone vacuum cleaner featuring constant suction was the DC01, sold for £200. In their research for the vacuum cleaner, when Dyson asked people whether they would be happy with a transparent container for the dust, most respondents said no. Dyson and his team decided to make a transparent container anyway. [3]
In 1999, US company Hoover was found guilty of patent infringement and later admitted that it did consider buying the patent from James Dyson, but only to keep the technology out of the market.[4]
After the introduction of the DC02, DC02 Absolute, DC02 De Stijl, DC05, DC04, DC06 and DC04 Zorbster, the root Cyclone was introduced in April 2001 as the Dyson DC07, which uses seven smaller funnels on top of the vacuum.
[edit] Production moves to Malaysia
Initially, all Dyson vacuum cleaners and washing machines were made in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England. In 2002, the company transferred vacuum cleaner production to Malaysia. As Dyson was the major manufacturing company in Wiltshire outside of Swindon, this move aroused some controversy, although planning permission to expand the Malmesbury site had been refused, effectively leading Dyson to look elsewhere. A year later, washing machine production was also moved to Malaysia.
Although nearly 800 manufacturing jobs were lost, Dyson states that the cost savings from transferring production to Malaysia enabled investment in R&D at Malmesbury head office, and that the company employs more people in the UK than before the move to Malaysia.[5]
[edit] Cyclone technology
A Dyson cyclone works by employing cyclonic separation, which spins air at high speed. Dirt and dust are thrown out of the airflow and collected in the bin, not on a filter or in a bag.
The Dyson cyclone technology is enhanced by adding dual cyclone technology. On top of the vacuum chamber, seven funnel-shaped channels were added that force air to travel in higher curvature cyclones than in the main initial cyclone, creating higher centrifugal force and allowing smaller particles to be captured before the air is expelled.
The powerful suction spins out larger dirt and debris. The shroud then filters out fluff and dirt. The fast moving air takes the smaller dirt and dust particles into the cones where the dirty air is accelerated to 900 mph (1,400 km/h), spinning at over 324,000 rpm in each cone.[6] Centrifugal forces of 200,000 g are exerted on the tiny particles moving in the 900 mph (1,400 km/h) dirty air inside the cones. The momentum of the particles is so high, that cigarette smoke particles separate from the air at the narrow end of the cones and gather in the container. The use of centrifugal forces rather than fine filters results in the Dyson maintaining suction without deterioration as dust passes through the cyclones to be collected in the container.
[edit] Products
[edit] References
- ^ The Manufacturer Power 50 2006
- ^ "James Dyson: Business whirlwind". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1802155.stm. Retrieved 2007-06-28.
- ^ RGC Jenkins & Co., Trade Mark and Patent Attorneys A Clear Bin Policy
- ^ Dyson cleans up in patent battle with rival Hoover
- ^ BBC NEWS - Dyson plant shuts up shop (26 September, 2002)
- ^ "Eye Of The Cyclone: How does Dyson's Dual-Cyclone technology work?". IndustryWeek. http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentArticles/asp/articles.asp?ArticleId=571. Retrieved 2007-06-28.
