on Tools & Techniques

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.