By Wayne Miller and Michael Keer

Reduce Risk and Prepare for the Unexpected

In today’s global economy, supply chain disruptions are inevitable. Companies must proactively plan for resilience and adaptability, whether due to geopolitical tensions, tariffs, component shortages, or factory challenges.

Product Realization Group’s veteran hardware and operations experts Michael Keer, Founder and Managing Partner, and Wayne Miller, New Product Development and Introduction, shared their insights on mitigating supply chain risk, drawing from decades of experience in manufacturing, operations, and supplier management. Below, we outline seven key strategies to safeguard your supply chain and keep your production on track.

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By Mike Freier

The Journey to Volume Manufacturing and Beyond: Scaling Your Hardware-based Product

In the span of our idea-to-scale series, we’ve navigated through the various phases of transforming a hardware-based product idea into a market-ready product. We’ve explored the crucial stages of design, planning, development, as well as controlled introduction. Now, we arrive at the pivotal point of Volume Manufacturing, where we will learn how it can be leveraged to increase efficiency, improve quality and lower costs to effectively scale your business. 

In this final segment, we turn our focus to scaling a resilient supply chain and revisiting key concepts from earlier segments. These include Contract Manufacturer (CM) selection, tooling and fixturing, communication, and business systems. We’ll also include additional insights into production forecasting, test, and logistics and repair, with a focus on quality, delivery and cost-effectiveness.

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By Mike Freier

In the last blog, we discussed the importance of business systems including the perils of manual processes, common business systems used for an agile hardware product lifecycle, optimizing data flows, managing product data across systems, and tips for success. 

Now, in this final blog in the controlled Introduction series, we discuss the importance of customer trials, identifying and developing trial customers, running the trials and how to leverage the learnings resulting from these trials to benefit your business.

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By Mike Freier

In the last blog, we discussed how to navigate the various mechanical tooling options and the advantages and trade-offs for volume production. We learned that considering factors such as lead times, cost, quality, and control over development processes is essential to selecting the most appropriate tooling option tailored to your specific product requirements.

Now, let’s continue to our next blog series, which will focus on business systems. Business systems are critical for supporting agile product realization, optimizing your processes, meeting regulatory compliance, and scaling your business. So let’s explore business systems strategies, flows, usage throughout the product life cycle, and tips for success.

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Article by Mike Freier

In our last blog post, we delved into the journey of transitioning from engineering and beta units to high-volume production. We explored the crucial steps of choosing a reliable contract manufacturer (CM), negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement, and providing comprehensive documentation to support the product assembly process.

Now, let’s dive into our next blog piece, where we’ll uncover the world of mechanical tooling options that will support your product’s successful development and scale-up into high-volume production. We’ll be exploring 3D printing, soft tooling, and hard tooling, each offering unique advantages and trade-offs. By understanding these differences, you’ll be empowered to make better informed decisions and select the best strategy to support your business.

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Article by Mike Freier

In the last blog post, we discussed how to validate your product and cover some of the important testing that your engineering teams should plan on to ensure your product meets all the requirements outlined in the engineering design specification.

Transitioning from engineering and beta units to high volume production involves finding a contract manufacturer (CM) as well as sub-tier volume suppliers, signing a deal with the CM, and handing off the set of data and instructions to make your product. Read on to learn what to lookout for in each step in the process of scaling your product into volume manufacturing.

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Article by Mike Freier

In the last blog post, we discussed how incorporating Agile principles can improve your hardware product development process. Not only will you be able to accelerate your schedule, but you can also develop higher quality products with lower costs and reduced risks. Furthermore, Agile frameworks and techniques can fit into your existing new product introduction (NPI) and stage gate process, so your high-level standard operating procedures do not have to change.  

Once you have engineering and beta units in hand, validation and verification can begin. In this stage, engineering teams should test your product against the engineering design specification to verify that your product meets the performance, reliability, regulatory, manufacturing test, and safety goals.

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Article by Mike Freier

Manufacturing is an essential step in a new product launch that requires a thoughtful strategy.  In this stage, teams define a manufacturing strategy, create a development schedule, and built units to test.

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Article by Mike Freier

In the last blog post, we discussed why Design for Excellence (DfX) is important to your business.  Building on several important concepts, this blog will focus on the Product Development phase and discuss how incorporating Agile principles can improve and accelerate your hardware product development process.

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by Mike Freier

Design for Excellence (DfX) is a holistic approach to designing a hardware product that takes into account how the product is made at scale. In addition to understanding your manufacturing plan and target costs, there are six categories to consider: assembly, cost, manufacturing, test, service, and supply chain.

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by Mike Freier

In the next chapter in our series on taking a hardware product from idea to scale, we move into the Design & Planning stage. Minimal Viable Products (MVP) and roadmaps will help you identify the key features for your new product.

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by Mike Freier

The feasibility phase addresses two questions. First, can your design be made into a manufacturable product? And, second, how will you sell your product and to whom?

Validating the feasibility of manufacturing a new product is the next chapter in our series by Mike Freier on how to take a new hardware product from idea to scale.

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by Mike Freier

In this series on developing a hardware product from idea to scale, we begin with the essential but often overlooked Concept & Feasibility phase. This blog explains the concept half of the process, which addresses the customer, competition, and costs of your product.

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By Mike Freier

Mike Freier, a PRG Partner, authored a series of blogs about how hardware products transition from an idea, through development, manufacturing and volume sales to their eventual end of life. Join us on this journey and learn how to avoid the pitfalls and risks that companies encounter on their way to a successful product launch.

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