New Product Introduction (NPI), bringing a new idea to market, is often a much more complex process than expected. In previous blogs, I’ve talked about aspects of taking a product into production like writing a business plan, design for supply chain and design for assembly. The common thread is that this is a multi-disciplinary process. There are lots of stakeholders and to have a successful product, all of the stakeholders must be considered throughout.

The ultimate stakeholder of course, is the customer. This is something that many of us will forget, it’s natural that the engineers, designers, and craftsmen who developed an idea will take pride in their work. But, if customers aren’t willing to buy your product, you don’t have a product.

Taking your product into production can often be the first point where the project becomes truly multi-disciplinary. And I don’t mean different types of engineering. NPI is the first time that all the groups in a company must be involved. It’s good practice to include all the stakeholders during ideation and design, that will allow a company to develop better products quicker. But when taking an idea into production, involving everyone in the company is critical.

There are a lot of different stakeholders that have a wide array of skill sets (and opinions) and they all need to effectively contribute. finance, sales and marketing, purchasing, logistics, assembly, service, QA/QC all have input to a successful product and must be part of the development process.

Managing all of the stakeholders means that the one key role in the NPI process will be the project manager. They may not have that title, but someone needs to consider the entire cross-functional scope of the project while balancing budget, timeline, as well as the needs and capabilities of all of the stakeholders. This is not a skill set that everyone has and randomly assigning the role to part of the team, or worse, dividing the project management responsibilities across the team, can severely jeopardize the project.

Early stage companies may not have the multi-disciplinary staff or experience required for a NPI project. Engineers will rarely be good at sourcing, there may not be a purchasing department yet, or they may not have experience with negotiating longer term volume-based supply contracts. The list goes on. NPI is one point where a company should not try to learn by trying.

NPI is time sensitive and expensive. It is also not a core function, most companies don’t continually develop products, NPI will be an occasional activity and not something that requires full time staff (and the associated long term cost). Finding external support for missing experience is not a failing, but often the best way to effectively get to the company’s real goal, to get that new product into production.
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An external firm may be the best option for project management where experienced NPI people can provide support just for the duration of the project. Providing guidance on requirements and timing they can also assist in building internal teams and processes to support production shortening the overall development time and helping to set the company up for success.

NPI is all about getting your concept to market as quickly and effectively as possible. For most companies, NPI will be a periodic necessity, and not a core function. Therefore, it is important to consider the current team and establish if there is already a team member who can take on the critical role of project manager for this new product. If not, finding budget to bring on an external firm who can manage the NPI process and allow the team to focus on what they know best – the product and its potential customer – can save money, time, and get that product into production much more efficiently. 

You’ve created a working design, the next step is to start production, right? The simple answer is unfortunately, no.

Building more than one of anything effectively and efficiently is completely different than building just one. That’s a sweeping statement, but there’s a lot to consider in planning your production. By assuming that you can simply duplicate your initial builds can lead to costly delays, significantly higher manufacturing costs, more frequent redesign, and often considerable post sale costs due to warranty and service issues.

Building one or two units of a new product to prove out a concept is a necessary step in new product development. These first builds, or proof of concepts, help to prove that the idea is viable, can theoretically meet the business goals , and should be developed further. They allow for testing the concepts before spending any significant time and resources on engineering and manufacturing. However, those first units are typically hand crafted, often by the engineers/designers themselves, using whatever parts can be found quickly. Taking great care to make and fit parts, they test out functionality and tweak the design to work and hence, these first builds require a great deal of time and skilled labour to build and commission. Once the first builds are complete, there is a lot more work to do before the product is ready to be built in any volume.

There are a host of considerations that go into a production ready design based around being able to provide a consistent, high-quality product at volume. The business plan will help identify the quantity of units that need to be produced and when. It should also outline the expected cost (profit) goals that will help determine what can and cannot be considered in production.

Custom and Fabricated Parts
Most products are going to be a mix of custom fabricated and purchased parts. If you don’t consider how the custom parts are made, you can design parts that are difficult, expensive, or even impossible to make. You need to select your fabricators and work with them to ensure the designs work for their equipment, tooling, and processes. You can craft a lot of things by hand that can not be made cost effectively in production. Ramping up production over time may also require a series of different designs to suit different manufacturing methods. Machining vs. injection moulding a plastic part is a prime example, you have to consider when does the extra capital cost for moulds make budgetary sense for your unique product.

Additive manufacturing allows designers to get hands-on examples quickly and can be a great development tool. However, 3D printing is currently not a cost-effective process for volume parts and often produces a part that is significantly weaker with poorer surface finishes than other lower cost production options. 3D printing also allows you to create features that aren’t practical, or impossible, to make with other fabrication techniques which will lead to part redesign.

Building Supply Chain Simultaneously with Product Design
Supply chain frequently gets overlooked in the early development. However, sourcing the correct parts from reliable vendors that can be supplied at a reasonable price and in the quantities required throughout the lifetime of a product is critical. Not being able to secure a single chip for example, can mean a PCB can’t be assembled which can delay the entire build and a purchased part that gets discontinued can mean a lot of part redesign to accommodate an alternative.

Logistics and regional requirements can greatly affect your design. If your product contains batteries for instance, there will be special considerations on how you package and ship your product. There are some jurisdictions that will require information on where all of the parts were made and assembled, and that can affect shipping and sales.

It’s crucial that you develop your supply chain as part of the design process (not as a separate activity). Developing your supply chain in collaboration with your product design rather than one after the other not only improves your product design and delivery, but speeds up your time to market. This is a huge topic and we will dive into it further in a future post.

Assembly
Probably the highest cost of most products will be the assembly. It can also be where the most variability is added to the final product.  At the end of the day, every finished product should be as close to identical to the rest as possible, consistency is paramount. Assembly must be as simple and as quick as possible to insure the lowest cost with the fewest quality issues.

The first builds take a great deal of time, skilled labour can do anything with enough time and money, but that’s not the goal behind production. Production has to be the repeated building at the lowest cost to meet the sales requirements (business case).

To optimize assembly, you have to look at each assembly step and ensure that it can be done as simply, safely and as quickly as possible. Parts need to align well without extra effort, tooling should be easy to use and fastening should be common throughout whenever possible. The entire process must be well documented allowing consistent training and the development of quality control standards.

DFx
When you have a product idea that can go to production you need to go through the entire DFx process - design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for test, design for supply chain, design for service before it is truly ready to be made in any volume. Moving from a prototype into production is not a simple journey to navigate and it takes skill sets that are specific to new production introduction. Most companies will need some external support to do it well and efficiently and it’s well worth seeking input early in the process.

Peter Heuss, P.Eng.
Co-Founder, Berlin KraftWorks Inc. 

There’s nothing more exciting than that aha moment – when the light bulb goes off for a great new product. It’s very tempting to dive in right away and start building. But it’s all too easy to get carried away creating, and forget to consider what a new product must do to be successful.

At the end of the day, a product is going to have to be sellable, someone is going to have to want to buy it. It will also have to make the company a profit and it cannot expose the company to any undue risks. That sounds simple enough, but there’s a lot there to consider and it can drastically affect how a product is designed and built.

That first inspiration needs to be weighed against a few very important business decisions to understand if the product is viable, and if so, what are the conditions it will have to meet to be successful. Initially, those decisions will likely be based around market size, time to market and a predicted sales price (potential profit).  Those 3 basic criteria are already more than enough to shape the conceptual design.

Building a business case to define the expectations for a new product helps to direct the development and avoid costly unusable labour and purchases. It also lets everyone in the company understand what the goals are for the new concept. A new product that doesn’t meet the business goals is not going to be successful.  

The new product idea may come from anyone in the company. It may be from sales filling a customer need, engineering implementing some new tech, or really anyone in the company. A good idea can come from anywhere, but it’s very likely that no one person will fully understand everything that goes into making a successful product. The more input you get from throughout your company will allow you to build a more comprehensive business case.  

Typically, when you start to look at the new concept with respect to selling, the idea will change. External input may prove some ideas incorrect or point out missing features. Looking at the end sales volumes and pricing may dictate the eventual manufacturing methods and change the materials, interface, feature set etc. That doesn’t mean the idea wasn’t a good one to start with, it’s just going to help that idea be successful.

As the product ideas are developed, the business case will be refined as well. Like every other design document, it will be a living document. There will be more detail around use cases, regional differences, shipping, manufacturing, industrial design, etc. that affect the company goals for the product.

Take the time to build a business case for every new product idea. They don’t need to be complicated, start with the basics. With a business case in hand, you can begin to develop the new idea in a direction that has much a higher chance of success.