Air Liquide wins international product design award for its innovative Qlixbi packaged gas offer

Qlixbi, Air Liquide’s breakthrough packaged gas solution, has won a Red Dot Award 2020 in the “Innovative product” metacategory of the Product Design discipline. This prestigious international award recognizes Qlixbi for its excellent achievements and high design quality acknowledging that thanks to Qlixbi’s innovations, the work of welders is considerably simplified and becomes quicker and safer.

In 2020, designers and companies from 60 countries entered more than 6,500 products.The panel of 36 jurors comprised many of the world’s most prominent and influential product designers, representing 19 countries. The Jury tested all of the entries in order to assess criteria among which Degree of Innovation, Functionality, Ergonomics, Durability and Symbolic and Emotional Content. Solutions such as Qlixbi which are successful in the “Innovative Products” metacategory set new standards and lay the foundations for fundamental industry change.

Qlixbi turns the act of welding into a user-friendly experience by making it easier, faster and safer, thanks to a mix of mechanical and digital innovations. The product and its services provide welders and welding shops with insights to help optimize their operations and increase efficiency.

Qlixbi was developed through a design thinking approach involving 700 customers from various geographies, Air Liquide’s Research and Development teams from its Innovation Campus in Paris, as well as Air Liquide Industrial Merchant operations. The Qlixbi project multi-disciplinary team leveraged a wide variety of in-house expertises from packaged gas core technical areas to user research, UX (User Experience) design and IoT (Internet of Things). Taking into account customers’ feedback continuously all along the design process was a key success factor to ensure the product meets their needs.

Matthieu Giard, Vice President and Executive Committee Member of Air Liquide Group, supervising the Industrial Merchant business activity said:

“To create Qlixbi, we have revisited our industrial products innovation process. Centered on the customer, design thinking enables us to maximise the user experience, through a global offer combining a product and digital services, and this new approach is now paving the way for the future.”