Product Development

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Stellar provides complete Product Development Services including Product Management, Electrical and Hardware Design, App Design, Software, Prototyping, and transition to Production Manufacturing.  We are experts in QRPD - Quality Rapid Product Development.  Let us help you with your new products.  

Companies have different processes for product development. Whatever the process, the essential steps are the same: 

Product Definition – We have an idea. Is this a product we should build? Does it fit our company? Does our customer need this solution? What features should it have? 

Product Investigation - What technologies do we need? Have we done this before? If not, do we know someone that has? If not, how can we learn? What price point will work for our customers? Can we build it profitably? What resources will we use internally? What resources will we need to outsource? 

Product Design - Industrial Design; Electrical Design; Mechanical Design; Software. 

Product Preparation – Packaging Design; Literature; Marketing Plan; Manufacturing Plan; Service Training; Tech Support Training; Parts Purchasing; Tooling. 

Pilot Build – Tooling; Beta Testing; Product Design Review. 

Production– Manufacturing; Test Plans; Quality Plans; Inspection Plans.

Shipping– Logistics; Warehousing; Selling.

We’ll look at these steps in more detail, offering insight into what is really going on behind the scenes, and offering some tips for you to help you with the process.  

Most people have had at least one product idea and wonder why everyone else doesn’t see the brilliance and immediately start building the product.

Building a new product can be a challenging process. Here we will present why some products are “chosen” and others never get beyond the idea stage.

For manufacturers, new product ideas come from lots of places – internally, salespeople, engineering staff, service department, tech support and even the guys on the shipping docks have ideas. Customers always have something new they believe they desperately need.

Most manufacturers will explore every idea, no matter the source. There are some preliminary hurdles that must be overcome for a product idea to move to the next stage. 

The first question, and arguably the most important, is always “Do we think customers will want this?” This is answered by floating the idea to a few people, first inside the company and then with key customers (that means the customers that buy significant amounts of existing product). 

If the idea passes this first sniff test, a Product Manager is assigned to manage the product development process. Product Managers “own” the product from idea stage through the product’s end of life, when it’s potential to generate revenue has run its course. Professional Product Managers utilize a variety of processes to evaluate the viability of a new product. This includes customer interviews, focus groups, discussions with the sales and production teams, and other tools. 

The first deliverable for the Project Manager is a Product Definition. This is a document that essentially says what the product is, what problem it solves, and how it solves that problem. This document will also have some preliminary cost targets and sales forecasts.  It will also address the available market, and the product's affect, if any, on existing products.  Nobody wants to build a new product that cannibalizes the sales of an existing, successful product.  Some companies have formal processes with different names for this document, for example Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) or Product Requirements Document (PRD), while others have less formal processes and scribbles on napkins are sufficient. It is our belief that the more formal the process, the better the chance of building a successful product. 

This document is then reviewed by management to determine if it is a project that should move to the next stage. Ultimately, the question always becomes “Is this profitable? Can we get a better return on investment putting the money this will cost somewhere else?”

Once the decision is made that a new product idea is worth pursuing, the next step is to figure out how to build it and what it will take – in both time and money. This is the stage where some internal resources are assigned to start digging into the product’s viability and the product idea becomes a project.

In the Product Investigation phase, the team assigned to the project will start to figure out exactly what needs to be done. The Project Manager will be drawing on people in all departments to answer questions. Those questions include:

· What technologies and skills do we need?

· Have we done this before? If not, do we know someone who has? If not, how can we learn?

· What price will work for our customers?

· How much will it cost to build?

· How long will it take to develop? Manufacture?

· What resources are required - Internal? External?

As the questions are answered by the various departments, the Project Manager begins to put together the project plan and schedule. This is a detailed plan with resource allocations, schedules, and estimated costs. 

This is when the Project Manager gets buy-in and commitments from various department heads about the project and the schedule. Think of the Project Manager as the General Contractor of the project, coordinating all the subcontractors. Like any building project, conflicts will arise. Certain parts need to be completed before the next part can be done; Problems will arise that need solutions; disputes will need to be settled; sometimes people need to be pushed to meet schedules. 

Often, someone will produce a new way to do something, or engineering will see that with a minor change here or there, a new feature can be added. One of the major roles of the project manager is to measure the cost of any changes in resources and time against the affect that change will have on the revenue generated by the product. For example, it will take one extra week and add $3.00 to the cost to add feature A. Does feature A add enough revenue to justify the additional cost and the lost week? Or, removing feature B will shorten development time by two weeks, and reduce cost by $5.00. Is feature B critical to the product’s function? Can it be removed without negatively impacting sales?

At this point, changes are much easier and less costly to make. Extra time spent in this phase will save a lot of time later and help make the project run smoothly. Responsible manufacturers get a lot of feedback from customers during this phase. 

This is when the real engineering work on the product begins. Unless you work in product development daily, you’ve probably never realized just how much there is to do for even the simplest product.

Engineering encompasses two main disciplines: Hardware (includes electrical design and mechanical design) and Software (this includes embedded software or firmware, system level software or application layer, user interface, and any device applications such as iPhone or Android).

Mechanical design is influenced by electrical design. We can’t have a package that is too small for what needs to go inside it, and there is no reason to have a giant box with little inside it. Knobs, switches, jacks, and connectors can take up a lot of space and often end up driving the overall size. Electrically, all those connectors and knobs must be mounted on a circuit board along with any indicator lamps or displays – whose location is again usually driven by the desired appearance. 

Which brings us to where the marketing department comes into play. The final look and feel of the product are decided by them. Often the product is part of a family or line of products and a consistent look is important for managing the brand name. 

This process is iterative with lots of give and take and back and forth between the engineers, marketing, the product manager and even the sales team. Customers are often asked to provide feedback during this process as well. 

I can tell you from experience that some of those meetings that decide the final feature set, or location of connectors or lights – and even the color of those lights, can get heated. That’s what happens when passionate people are trying to decide exactly what will be built. This step is also what makes products late, and why a final product may look different and have different features from what was originally discussed.

In the product development world, the software team is usually they the last guys in, and the last guys out… and they are often required to adjust or change something on the fly to achieve the desired result.

Almost every electronics product being built today requires some sort of software. Software is the most complex part of the product because it is so open-ended and subject to feature-creep during the development process. That is why tightly defining the feature set is critical during the product definition stage.

While the software team is involved from the beginning of a new product design, their workload increases once the electrical design is finalized. It’s challenging for them to write and test code without having final hardware. Yes, they will use simulations, but I cannot tell you how many times the real hardware has acted differently from the simulation – or what was promised when the code writing began. There always seems to be some variable that doesn’t appear until real hardware is built.   

A detailed description of software development is far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, that the critical decisions start early, and run late into the project, and early software decisions can profoundly affect the hardware design. For example, if the software team wants to use an I2C bus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C) for internal communications, all the selected components must be able to support that bus. Additionally, that bus type requires shielding and balanced lines (the paths for the different parts of the signal must be the same exact length). 

There are two basic types of software – system level or embedded software (also called firmware) and application layer or user interface software. Now, before the code jockeys go all nuts and start sending us nasty e-mails, I know that is reductive. But it works for this purpose. 

Embedded software controls internal functions and is not directly accessible by the user. It usually operates in an environment specific to the hardware and is stored in persistent memory (memory that stays intact even when the device is powered off).

Application layer software is the operating system of the product and manages its overall operation. This is the software level that accepts inputs from user actions, makes decisions about what actions to take, and outputs information to the user.

The User Interface, in today’s world, is typically a graphic display with a dashboard of information for the user but can be as simple as a single LED. Every aspect of that LED is scrutinized – Where will it be located? What color? How bright? Does it flash? How fast?

Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) are even more complex. Every aspect of every object in the GUI must be defined in detail, including location, size, shape, color, and function. That’s a lot of decisions to make and there must be a consensus between engineering, software, marketing and most importantly, customer feedback. This is where a strong, experienced Product Manager is worth his weight in gold. 

For products that require a mobile device interface (phone or tablet) those applications must be developed. And the GUI must be designed for each size and shape of device – phone, tablet, PC, etc. The finished applications must then go through approvals for the device and be uploaded to the relevant sites for customers to download.

With today’s complex products, software is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. Features can be added or adjusted at lower cost and faster than making hardware changes. That leads many to increase features and increase complexity. It’s sometimes difficult to make the decision to ship now and add a feature in the next update.

This phase in the product development process often gets taken for granted. This phase can take as much time as the actual product design phase – in some cases it may be longer. Every new product requires a lot of supporting items.  These can be broken into two main categories: Marketing/Customer Support and Manufacturing Support.

Marketing/Customer Support includes the items that present the product to the customer, like Packaging, User Guides, Literature, and the Marketing Plan to launch the product and drive sales.  

Packaging design is an art unto itself and there is a lot to consider. The packaging must protect the product during shipping as well as support the company’s brand. Retail store sales require a different presentation than distribution/warehouse sales. 

The user guide can range from a small card with warranty information to a multiple page document with detailed installation and/or operation instructions. Again, determined by the type of product and the sales channel. 

The marketing plan is the overarching document that drives all these decisions. Who is the customer? How will the product be used? How will the company communicate to the customer? All must be considered and defined in the marketing plan.

The manufacturing plan describes how the product will be built, who will build it, resources that must be allocated, and the schedule for when it will be built.  

Any long lead times on components may have an impact on the build schedule and must be considered. Alternative parts may need to be found. 

Tooling to produce manufactured parts must be designed and built. Test fixtures for any electronics must also be designed and built. Test plans with required rejection rates and criteria must be defined. 

Manufacturing location is a factor in determining delivery times. Shipping from some offshore locations can take weeks – especially if government agencies, such as customs, are involved. 

It’s hard to get it all right and past experience is especially helpful in this phase 

Typically, a pilot build of a few hundred products is performed t work out any manufacturing kinks prior to proceeding with full production builds. The pilot build is the first use of all production tooling, processes, and test procedures and fixtures. Any issues that will affect full production manufacturing are ironed out here. 

The units produced during the pilot build go through a “First Article Inspection”. This is where the engineering team that designed the product checks every single thing about the product to ensure that it meets the company’s standards for quality. 

Now full-scale production can begin, and units can begin shipping into the distribution chain.  

You’ve probably noticed various symbols on products and maybe you’ve even wondered what they mean. These are marks representing safety testing and certification agencies. For product developers, they mean added time and cost, and all too often, the amount of either of those is hard to predict. 

Sometimes designs fail the initial testing and suggestions are made for improvement. Changes get made and testing begins again. This process continues until the product passes the certification. This becomes time-consuming and expensive. Many of the tests are “Destructive Tests” meaning the product is tested until failure, frequently resulting in the destruction of the product. 

In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires products to be tested for safety by a third-party Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). These tests are to certify that the product meets certain safety standards. The standards are established by consensus of government agencies, consumer groups, insurance companies and the standards organizations themselves. 

Products must display the mark of the certifying agency. The required certifications vary by product type and markets in which they will be sold. Different countries have different requirements, and products that are sold in multiple countries will have multiple marks. 

Most products will display one of the following marks:

UL.  Underwriter’s Laboratories.  UL was founded in 1894 and is the DeFacto benchmark for safety testing in the United States. The basic mark is often shown with a “C” and “US” on either side with a note that indicates the relevant standard. The “C” means that the tested product complies with standards of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). 

CSA.  The Canadian Standards Association.  This is the safety standards organization for Canada. CSA also offers testing to US standards. When the mark includes the “C” and the “US”, the product conforms to standards in both countries. 

TUV.  Technischer Überwachungsverein (English Translation: Technical Inspection Association; commonly called TUV). 

Companies may utilize any of these agencies to certify that their products meet the safety standards. When a product is sold in multiple countries, other marks may also be displayed.

CE.  The product meets the requirements of the applicable directives of the European Economic Area. The marking means that the manufacturer or importer claims compliance with the relevant legislation. There is no third-party certification for this mark, but a declaration of conformity must be maintained and made available to any authorities that request it. This declaration is frequently provided by the testing agency as a part of the safety standards testing.

In addition to safety requirements, products may be required to conform to other kinds of standards, depending on the product type and the countries in which it will be sold. 

FCC.  The product complies with the electromagnetic interference regulations of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Parts 15 and 18 of these regulations apply to products that radiate, or may be vulnerable to, radio interference. 

RoHS.  The product conforms to the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive. That’s short for “Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment” that was adopted by the European Union. Often referred to as the “lead Free” directive, it bans the use of 10 different substances. 

WEEE.  The product conforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive that was adopted by the European Union. Commonly called the “Wheelie Bin”, it indicates that the product contains a certain percentage of recyclable materials, and that the manufacturer has made provisions for the collection and recycling of those products. Products with symbols that do not have the lower black bar were manufactured prior to 2005 and the owner of the product is obligated to make provisions for its recycling. 

The testing these marks represent is important. Selling, installing, or using non-certified products will increase your exposure to liability. Non-certified products may also jeopardize insurance protection.