EES Loulakis helps IKEA to increase their Store design effectiveness by 25%

IKEA offers a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. In most of the countries IKEA deploys large and medium scale stores. In these stores the design has to apply the Democratic Design principles, meaning that all products should be presented well according to local habits or trends. To achieve this, IKEA is using a large team of in-house designers to create and maintain the show rooms / Exhibition - produce area of each store. 

The designers used to work on Autodesk AutoCAD, Sketch Up and Excel and create 2D, 3D drawings and schedules. This led to a time-consuming design process, including a lot of rework to convert 2D drawings to 3D models, and a great effort for element quantification and item scheduling. Leveraging the BIM capabilities and switching to a BIM friendly software seemed to be the best opportunity for improvement.

IKEA realized that switching to a BIM solution was the way forward to achieve better and more effective coordination of 2D, 3D drawings and live schedules. Using Autodesk Revit instead of Autodesk AutoCAD and Sketch Up provides an intuitive centralized teamwork environment for creating technical drawings, visualizations and schedules that saves time and effort.

For IKEA, Autodesk Revit is the product that can help smaller teams still operate an efficient design process. The use of parametric modeling processes, computational design and intelligent family libraries can lead to greater efficiency, faster results, better coordination.

EES Loulakis & Associates has a deep knowledge and understanding of the software. The project began with the experts spending time to analyze IKEAs local needs, and create unique learning content for a custom made training tailored to the needs of the customer. The tailored intensive training was delivered to more than 100 IKEAs designers. By the end of the engagement they could all work as one team, create intelligent 3D models of the stores, present renderings of their proposals and detailed lists of the items that they will use for the construction.

The training included upskilling on the use of the software but also methods and design workflows, so that designers could focus on the design and not the search of the process. It is not just about getting the software; It is to know how to use it. It’s not just establishing best practices, it’s about the best utility of those practices.”

The training was delivered just before and during the pandemic period increasing the complexity and changing the way we work. EES Loulakis, were agile enough to adopt to the new mandated and it was a success.

The solution included a very brave decision from the IKEA team, to dedicate time form the day to day tasks, give proper training to all the employees and then move all of the design process from Autodesk AutoCAD to Autodesk Revit on a tight deadline. The decision did not include any grace or transitional period. Every employee should become proficient to Autodesk Revit and stop using any other solution. This gave a clear message to everyone in the team that they should embrace the change and adapt to the new methodology to start working with Autodesk Revit.

All the designers very soon managed to work efficiently with Autodesk Revit as a team and complete design tasks faster and with great efficiency. Years of working with CAD instead of taking advantage of the BIM technologies are long past.

Autodesk Revit implementation resulted in highly positive project outcomes, including reduced design re-work and reduced lost effort across their projects. With faster design iterations that quickly led to a high quality and matured result, IKEA successfully decreased time to design by 25 percent average per project.

Mr Polycronidis and MRs Sdralli, key contacts for the project execution and delivery from the client’s side, who lead the design sectors of IKEA mention:

Konstantinos Polychronidis - Migration Executive

Our migration from CAD to BIM was an exceptional experience. EES Loulakis & Associates offered high quality training and support services. Their teaching methods were effective, providing excellent solutions and instructions. Apart from the teaching, they supported the whole training team moreover in technical matters, which are often difficult to encounter, a fact which is really valuable.

The great success of that really challenging project was to train a remarkable number of people for Greece-Bulgaria and Cyprus in a specific difficult period (pandemic). Their professionalism made the initial goal feasible despite the really difficult conditions.

After teaching completed, EES Loulakis & Associates was always available to respond and provide immediate solutions in any issue. With the help of Autodesk solutions, this has been a great experience that I will always remember in my career.

Irini Sdralli - Migration Executive Assistant

EES Loulakis & Associates provided a high level of quality on training and support services and helped IKEA achieve the first goal to migrate from CAD to BIM.

During the training, the e-learning environment was very pleasant, intimate, welcoming, positive and creative. Instructors were willing to explain in detail, to immediately solve any question or difficulty that arose. All in all, it was excellent and enjoyable training, a strong design experience, which really changed the way we work.

We managed to totally migrate from CAD to BIM, a fact that seemed to be unachievable in such a short time. Achieving this goal, the workflow in designing procedures changed drastically: nobody is using CAD anymore and BIM totally replaced it. Finally, there is a direct way to control projects gaining tremendous time since mistakes and misunderstandings are avoided. 

Thank you sincerely for the precious experience!