Necessity is the mother of invention. Much of the work at IKEA is about finding unexpected solutions to everyday problems. And sometimes, you have to look in some unusual places. In the mid-1980s, IKEA started thinking about how to come up with new products in steel and other metals. Furniture made of steel tubing had of course been made since the 1930s, but the tubing was expensive and heavy to transport. Was it possible to find a simpler, more affordable alternative? The answer was found at a company that manufactured shopping trolleys. Here you could see the trolleys being made by machines, without intervention from a human hand.
