I think Ikea and Dell are fighting it out for who has the best industrial engineers. The Dell desktop I received the other day has no screws. Even the boards at the back are screwless now. Opening up a Dell workstation is like unpeeling an onion. A wonderful piece of design, form and finish.
Ikea is another. Laser precision tooling has helped them, but their products are wonders of packaged components with high quality fit and finish. I bought some plastic draws this morning. They have designed the draw as one piece of plastic and have made the cut on the pieces thin enough that it is ductile, but large enough that it is not plastic or brittle, so that the one piece of plastic can be folded into a complete draw. That is an awesome piece of industrial engineering. (reply)
