The Red Dot Design Award, an international product competition for product designers and
manufacturers, is one of the largest design competitions in the world. Rocla Oy (hereafter Rocla),
the European arm of Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Co., Ltd., won a Red Dot Design Award
successively in 2015 and 2016. This paper presents the history of Rocla's product development and
technologies through general descriptions of the Red Dot Design Award, and explains the
characteristics of Rocla's product development such as product concept creation from the
perspective of users and simulation-based preliminary verification of components and software by
presenting the case example of the award-winning small electric counterbalance forklift truck.
