 Introduction The gaming industry is a dynamic landscape of constantly changing and improving technology. When competing digitally, success can hinge on laser focus and split-second reaction time. Brink Bionics wanted to help gamers achieve their best, and have developed the Impulse Neuro-Controller to improve click speed. The Impulse Neuro-Controller is a fingerless glove with sensors that detect the first neural impulse that goes into the finger. This detection then reduces the time between intent to act and execution. Brink Bionics had a 3D-printed proof of concept and were beginning to plan for production when they were introduced to Berlin KraftWorks (BKW). As a new company they were advised to have a design review, and review of their electronics to set themselves up for scalable manufacturing.
 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.  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.  Prototype seems to be one of the most misused words in manufacturing. An early working example of a concept is often referred to as a prototype; however, a prototype is actually the final design on which the manufacturing is patterned, the last design before you start to manufacture in volume. From Webster’s dictionary “a first full-scale and usually functional form of a new type or design of a construction”.
This early conceptual design is a proof of concept and is a totally necessary step to show that an idea is valid, determine if there is sales interest, and to test engineering ideas. Too often though, we see companies come up with a conceptual design, build a proof of concept and believe that the design is done and that they are ready to take the idea to production. Conceptual design is very much a creative activity and creativity cannot always be rushed. However, if the requirements of the product are well understood, knowing who the stakeholders are and what constraints must be met, conceptual design can avoid many issues. Creativity, however, does not negate good planning. Lean principles can still be used to plan and efficiently execute conceptual design. A good proof of concept needs to test if the potential product merits development. It will likely help determine how the final product will look, what features are required, and how they all fit together. It’s a learning step to help specify the product. There could many iterations, and it will focus on defining and confirming the requirements, but not on how it will be built. The final proof of concept should define the product requirements. The next step is to understand how to turn it into a product, something that can be built in volume repeatedly. Prototype design will take that conceptual design and figure out: how best to fabricate custom parts; what purchased components are suitable, available and at what cost; and how to assemble, package, ship and service the product. The necessities of cost and schedule will often dictate how much of the proof of concept design has to be modified. The final product will likely be a set of compromises from what was envisioned to what is practical. Both steps are essential. Both steps require different skill sets and input from different stakeholders. They both take time to do properly. So, it’s natural to want to skip some or all of the process, especially in a young company where budgets are tight. Every idea needs to be fully defined and vetted to ensure it meets the business needs. It’s the prototype that defines the final configuration and how that idea can be built and sold - and how profitable it will be.   As applied to organizational improvement, system thinking is grounded in the following fundamental principles:
System thinking takes a birds-eye view of how the firm is employing the resources it has invested in in delivering value to its customers. System thinking posits that a firm’s resources do not operate independently, but work together in an interconnected and interdependent fashion, not unlike the musicians in a world class symphony. System thinking focuses on aligning and synchronizing the flow of activities among and between each resource as they collaboratively work together to create and deliver ever-increasing customer value. When should we use a system thinking approach? Any organization interested in improving its operational and financial performance should employ system thinking. System thinking is a different way of viewing and thinking about how your organization creates value for the customers that buy your products and/or services. In a business environment, system thinking focuses on delighting the customer by significantly improving flow in the value creation stream in your firm. The focus on customer value creation distinguishes system thinking from conventional cost-driven management approach. Simply stated, cost-driven management breaks down the organization into its individual resources, products and services, then focuses on driving down or optimizing the cost of each resource in isolation. Unfortunately, this approach not only results in sub-optimal system performance but also ignores the only part of the system which generates cash inflows and future growth, the customer. System thinking as a best practice focuses on aligning and synchronizing the activities of all resources in a system. In the process, waste is eliminated, lead times are shortened, labour is freed up, capacity is released, costs are reduced, operational and financial performance is improved, and the firm becomes increasingly competitive. This approach will also effectively reduce a firm’s carbon footprint by reducing the production of greenhouse gases through the elimination of wasteful non-value adding practices. Organizations are constantly facing new challenges, and the future is unknowable. The current pandemic adds additional layers of complexity and volatility into an already challenging hypercompetitive marketplace. As a manager or business owner it can be overwhelmingly difficult to determine what the next step should be for your business in this increasingly complex environment. System thinking helps clarify and simplify the way forward. If your organization is struggling with any of the following issues, system thinking can help.
BKW’s Business Alignment Program BKW can help you resolve the challenges you are facing, and help you insulate your firm from the myriad of complex challenges you are faced with every day. Our Business Alignment Program based in system thinking is a proven approach. It will help you to identify hidden opportunities, release untapped capacity, and improve your business’ resiliency. If you are a small to medium sized manufacturing firm and anything you’ve read above resonates with you, we can help and would like to hear from you. Please click the link below to provide us with some preliminary information and BKW team member will contact you to discuss how we can help. Click here to contact the BKW team.  My Dad taught me a lot of life lessons, but two of them really stick. The first is to be honest; the second lesson is to buy the best quality products that you can afford and take care of them - they will reward you with a long life of use.
What products do you use – whether it’s a tool, an appliance, an article of clothing, a musical instrument, camping gear, or anything else - that have had a long, useful, life and are a pleasure to use? Bring to mind the older things that you consider to be vintage. Recently I listened to a podcast featuring Satish Kumar, where he says: “whatever we have should be beautiful, useful and durable at the same time.” It’s advice that he got from his grandmother. He calls it the ‘BUD’ principle of elegant simplicity. Let’s break that down a little - and as we do, I encourage you to think about how this applies in your life and experience. Later in this article, we’ll look at why forward-looking companies can benefit from adopting these principles for the products they design and manufacture. Beautiful When something is beautiful, we will want to use it for a long time. What do we mean here by beautiful? I can hear the discomfort among our engineering readers about something so subjective, so let’s qualify it:
Useful Think of the presents that you may have received in the holiday season. What will you still want in 5 years? What will wind up in donation pile, trash, recycling, or garage sale? Just so that we don’t get too puritanical here, useful items include toys, musical instruments, and so on. The question is whether this is something that you will want to pick up and use over and over. When I recently downsized from a four bedroom home to an apartment, I needed to purge about half of my possessions. What do I miss? Very little – in fact there’s a sense of freedom and lightness of only having what I need. Durable Products that last many, many years, potentially even lifetimes. Durable products are repairable with simple replacement parts and able to retain their functionality for years to come. The Business Opportunity The Turning Tide We are witnessing rapid transformation in the world. The last 40 years or so have represented a time of conspicuous consumption for many and an emphasis on low cost products that were designed and manufactured for planned obsolescence. This philosophy and behaviour has contributed to a lot of the environmental problems (landfill, pollution, climate change) that we’re just now starting to deal with. Considering that most of us are now aware of the problem, there’s an increasing desire for products that truly provide benefit (that are a joy to use and contribute to a better world), that minimize pollution and energy use throughout the lifecycle, that are usable for a long time, and that can be transformed well after they are no longer usable. Paying for the True Cost of a Product Our economic system privatizes profits and socializes costs – environmental (pollution, use of land), and societal (pressure on wages, benefits, safety, local economic collapse through plant closings, etc.). Governments, communities, and families are often the ones paying the cost of poorly made, low cost products, but this is starting to change. Just recently, the Ontario government announced that it will start charging producers for waste diversion. When the costs are borne by the producer, different product design and manufacturing decisions are made. The successful organizations of the near future will be the ones who consider these costs now and shift their design and manufacturing decisions accordingly. Our North American Opportunity How will we, in North America, be successful in designing and manufacturing products right here? I believe there’s an emerging market for high quality, well designed and made products that are affordable for most – the market segment between the low cost/marginal quality and the expensive/ultra premium end of the market. Many of the best designers and makers will want to work on these products and many consumers will turn to these products as their true value becomes appreciated. What goes around, comes around. Maybe my Dad was on to something. Efficient Product Development is Driven by a System Approach That Continually Considers Value12/17/2019
 Nearly all product development is a multi-disciplinary effort, usually with tight constraints on time, cost and function. But most engineering groups tend to design in isolation, where even the different engineering disciplines don’t interact, let alone considering supply chain, manufacturing, service, test etc… The risk is a design that doesn’t meet the business goals and needs to be reworked or adversely affects the company’s performance. I’ve learned this hard way in the past, having to re-design mechanical systems, for example, when they wouldn’t work with what the electrical engineers designed.
There are two principles that will help develop better products, quicker – value analysis (a part of lean and value stream theory) and systems design. Every process is made up of a series of steps or tasks. These tasks may not be linear, there may be a complex set of interactions required, but they always share the same basic structure. Every task includes a set of inputs, has a set of required outputs, has stakeholders who use those outputs, and is done under a set of constraints. The outputs should be based entirely on the value they deliver. The end goal is always to produce a product that meets the company’s goals as outlined in their business case. If the output of any task doesn’t contribute to those business goals, it’s waste. If the output has to be reworked because it doesn’t work with some other part of the design, it’s also waste. The inputs are where many design processes slip. I think everyone will agree that every part in a design is somehow affected by the other parts. It could be as simple as a bracket holding a PCB or as complicated as a motion control system controlling the movement of mechanical components driven by remote user input. The key to effective design is to consider those interactions from the start of design. System thinking is a way of looking at the inter-relationships of parts once they have been combined into a system. A portion of a design may seem appropriate on its own, but when taken in context with the entire system may fail. For example:
System Design is the application of systems theory to product development, taking a multi-disciplinary approach to design and implementation. It’s not a new concept, but it’s one that will save a lot of design time and produce a better design. The key to planning and executing the design is to first to consider the value each task creates. The three primary aspects of value are:
If we understand what value each task is to deliver, we can better understand what needs to be designed, and more importantly what is not required. And that helps determine what inputs we need to carry out that design. Those inputs will typically be from multiple sources including the design specification, outputs from preceding tasks, input from concurrent tasks, and some additional design knowledge and information. If we continually look at how each task is effected by previous tasks and how it is effected by and affects concurrent tasks, we can complete each task in a way the develops the most value for the overall system. By considering the entire system when planning each design task, and the value that task is generating, we can be more effective, producing better designs with less waste. |
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