d61 INTERVIEW / MIELE
Dr Miele – along with Dr Reinhard Zinkann – is a fourth generation Executive Director and Co-Proprietor of the Miele Group. He has a degree in Business Administration and Engineering and, before entering the family company in Gütersloh in 1999, worked for vehicle parts manufacturer Hella.
Dr Miele studied at the University of Karlsruhe and was awarded his doctorate at the University of St. Gallen. He is Chairman of the Entrepreneurs' Association for the Gütersloh region and Vice President of the Eastern- Westphalian Chamber of
sent new products along with a questionnaire. From time to time, you discover that things you thought would be very useful are not quite so useful for the end consumer, and yet other elements are more interesting to them. Through this kind of interaction, we tweak and test further.
Sometimes, the answers you get are the opposite to what we might have expected. This makes it really interesting because it unearths a real customer requirement, which then needs to be matched with the technological possibilities.
DESIGNER: There are numerous aesthetic choices with the new range. How important has this aspect become for consumers in recent years and to what extent has this become a more significant focus for Miele in developing these new products?
Dr Miele: This has become more and more important across all markets. We’ve seen this from our ArtLine range which addresses the desire, particularly from designers, to have an oven without a handle. It meant the development of mechanisms for opening the doors without a handle, and it has gone on to be very popular – more than I initially expected in fact. It is perhaps not for all users, since those regularly using their oven for baking might need to open the door up regularly and for them a conventional handle may work best.
Ultimately, the choices of which appliances you choose depends on how much space you have and which configuration will work best for you. Interestingly, we still have discussions about which configuration works best for a small or mid-sized kitchen, because there are different cooking styles, different user habits,
Commerce in Bielefeld. He also plays an active role on various supervisory boards, for example with the Ergo group of insurance companies.
The Miele company, founded in 1899, has a turnover of EUR 4.1bn, approximately 20,100 employees and its own sales subsidiaries or importers in around 100 countries. Miele was founded jointly by Dr Miele’s great-grandfather Carl Miele and his partner Reinhard Zinkann. Today, the Miele Group is under the joint leadership of both Executive Directors and Co-Proprietors as well as three non-family Executive Directors.
different choice of dishes, as well as regional variations such as an emphasis on wok cooking in China and less so in Europe for example.
These factors predetermine what kinds of appliances will be needed and so they all need to be kept in mind while you are developing new products.
DESIGNER: The
Generation 7000 range has functions that 'pre-empt' the user's requirements. What role do you think there will be for AI or 'smart' technology within the home of the future?
Dr Miele: There are a lot of options on the table. It comes down to what a customer wants. Whether you create a cake from scratch or you use a ready-prepared mix as part of the recipe, it is still the consumer who has baked that cake, as opposed to buying the finished product from the shop.
We do have a lot of automatic programmes but still we allow the user to change settings as they wish – to add 10 minutes if the cake is not brown enough, or to adjust the temperature if the result is not what they wanted. This is very important because in the end, the issue of quality is decided by the consumer. So yes, you can support the process with AI or various sensors, but these are not pre-defined settings that the user has to stick to. What is vital for us is that we are able to help the consumer to achieve the very best result from their appliance, so if you have limited cooking knowledge then our automatic programmes can be a real help in achieving good results, and if you’re an experienced chef, you still have the flexibility to make adjustments as you see fit.
DESIGNER: We were at the press launch of the Dialog
designer kitchen & bathroom
designerkbmag.co.uk
JUN 2019
DR MARKUS MIELE
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