Innovative sauna lighting system as an innovation project

The development of LED technology has brought in large number of lighting applications and solutions for business owners. LED offers one of the most versatile, durable, economic and low power consuming solutions in the lighting arena. The innovation project described in this paper was carried out in spring 2010 for a local small size industrial company that designs and manufactures LED lights and lighting systems. The company gave a task to design a new sauna lighting system utilizing modern multi-colour LEDs. The primary goal was to create an innovative way to control LED lighting in a sauna. All final year students participated in that project and they formed four separate design groups that were formally competing against each other. All groups found many new ideas of which they selected some and made a working prototype. The company leaders selected the best prototype as the winner. As a result, the company got a lot of good ideas and is using those in many of their products today. And the students managed to reduce the gap between the studies and real life work. The working together with industry experts, creative designers, leaders and even members of board took along the students to the most challenging problems of the day with a high motivation level.