Transcript
Welcome to 2 Minutes 2 Launch.
My name is Terry and I'll be answering questions about product development and electronics manufacturing in less than 2 minutes. If you have a topic that you'd like me to address, please leave your question in the comments below and I'll make sure to get to it.
For today's question, "What big things commonly get missed when preparing for production?"
This is an excellent question and I'm going to highlight 3 key areas.
The first one is having a timeline that works backwards from your intended product launch date.
There are a lot of activities that have to happen in order to successfully launch a product. You've got to make prototypes, you've got to have your pilot runs and do your pre-production or PVT builds, which is production verification testing.
You've got to have time for things like submitting for certifications like UL, FCC, and ISTA. Plus a whole lot of other activities.
Make sure you build a timeline from when you intend to launch that takes into account all those activities is really critical to set up the program for success.
The second thing I'll highlight is DFM, which stands for 'design for manufacturing.'
This is really important where the manufacturer gets to review the files provided by the customer and makes some recommendations for cost reduction, improved quality, or general manufacturing efficiency.
So make sure that there is enough time for DFM phase and that you are open to the collaboration with your manufacturing partner is really important and leads to a better product at the end of the day.
The last thing I'll highlight, this is a really big deal, is the programming and testing of the product in production.
Now through the product development process, most of the focus is developing the product. But in a production environment, you have to have a way to program and test 100% of the units that are coming out of the factory to ensure quality and that your product functions the way you expect it to in the field.
Developing a robust test hardware and test protocol is like developing a product on its own. It takes a significant amount of time. This is probably more than anything else we see - people don't realize how big it is and how long it's going to take. It can really throw a curveball into the schedule at the end of the day.
Those are the areas that I wanted to highlight. Thank you so much for watching 2 Minutes 2 Launch. We'll see you next time.
