QualityInspection.org

Quality Assurance, Product Development, and Purchasing Strategies in China

Is It Beneficial To Be First To Market With Your New Product Idea? [Podcast]

In this episode... A recent China Law Blog article questions the wisdom of rushing out your innovative new made-in-China product in order to 'beat the copycats' to market. While there are some situations where this may have some merit, sacrificing IP protection for speed seldom makes sense as you'll find out in this episode. What are the benefits and are they outweighed by the risks? What should you do to protect IP? When is the 'right time' to go public with your exciting new product and … [Read more...]

New Product Launch: Taking Shortcuts vs. Preventing Risks

You are developing a new product. There is currently nothing like your product on the market. You have high confidence that it will be successful (otherwise, why are you working on this project?). You need to make a choice. Do you want to do things fast? That's tempting, because who knows what the market will look like in 12 months. Or do you want to do things right? That means investing money and time in re-risking your project. Let's look at what these 2 approaches mean, in … [Read more...]

Navigating The Product Design and NPI Maze For New Products [Podcast]

In this episode… You've got an idea for a unique new product! Amazing! Now you need to develop that product concept, design it, test and validate it, and much more before finally going into mass production and bringing it to market. You may think that this is a linear process, but in fact, it's more like a complex maze and you may take many twists and turns. Renaud Anjoran is joined by experienced British product designer Andy Bartlett to explore this NPI process and the best practices … [Read more...]

Deliverables Buyers Should Get When Developing A New Product [Podcast]

In this episode... When you develop a new product what deliverables should you be getting during the new product development process in order to assure that your product will make it mass production with the minimum of risks and at the required quality and safety standards? Renaud Anjoran explains the various deliverables, such as your BOM, control plan, validation testing, and more, that you can expect to gain that represent milestones during the NPD process.   Just hit the play … [Read more...]

Developing a New Product? Think of Information Security Management.

More and more prototyping companies who routinely work for large companies have gotten certified to ISO 27001:2013 (*). If you have been scratching your head about what this standard about information security management entails and what it means for you, let me try and help clarify this topic. Here are three aspects that you probably want to check: … [Read more...]

Why New Product Development of Electronics Takes So Long

Over the years, we have been talking to people who are planning to or are in the process of, developing a new product. And there is a very serious mismatch between expectations and reality during the new product development process. So serious that people who are just starting on that path often cannot accept a realistic plan. Unrealistic expectations In their minds, there are only a few steps and a few success milestones. It looks a bit like this:   Harsh reality However, … [Read more...]

So, You Are an Inventor Looking for a Manufacturer? Think Again.

We are regularly contacted by self-described inventors who believe very hard in their product idea but do NOT want to manage that product’s development, production, and sale.  They are often smart people, brilliant even. But they tend not to be business savvy, and that leads many of them to make costly mistakes. This is especially true for electronic products and relatively complex mechanical products.   The million-dollar invention fallacy The truth is, the proportion of new … [Read more...]

Product Design Reliability Drives User Safety

I watched a nice video where the team from Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos' hobby and side business) explains how they designed their series of prototypes. It is a great example of validation of a totally new product that can have a catastrophic safety failure. You can watch it here: Some interesting takeaways: It is pretty clear that people can die if this product malfunctions. And, if there is one accident that results in deaths or near deaths, it will make their future customers … [Read more...]

How Bad Product Design Leads to Many Quality Issues

I had an interesting discussion a few days ago. It made me realize most people see products of obviously poor quality and think the issues come from manufacturing, while, in fact, they most often come from bad product design! Let's see why here... … [Read more...]

How good DFM and DFA Help with Production Cost & Quality

I have been reading 'the' reference textbook on the concepts of DFM and DFA (design for manufacturing and design for assembly). It's great for design engineers (especially on the mechanical side), for NPI program managers, and for anybody working on reliability, quality, or costing at the product design stage. People involved in manufacturing would also benefit from skimming through it. I picked 2 graphs that are quite interesting. … [Read more...]