QualityInspection.org

Quality Assurance, Product Development, and Purchasing Strategies in China

How & When To Transition from a Product Development Team To a Manufacturer

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A good manufacturer is good at... running mass productions without unpleasant surprises. That includes the careful validation of the manufacturing & testing processes for new products, good process control, good management of suppliers, and so on. But it doesn't necessarily designing the product itself. I actually recommend that companies avoid relying on a manufacturer excessively. In our guide to new product manufacturing in China, it is "deadly mistake No. 3". At the same … [Read more...]

Fail Safe Design Principles & Examples | Product Risk Reduction

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Some products may, if they fail in a certain way, endanger people's safety or lead to enormous economic losses. That puts much more responsibility on the designers' shoulders and is why using fail safe design principles is so critical. Let's take a closer look at these principles and some fail safe examples you can see in today's products... … [Read more...]

Planning for Quality & Compliance at the Product Design Stage: 3 Topics You MUST Focus On

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A reader asked what he should pay attention to when he starts to work on a new product in order to avoid a very large “dumb tax” in the future. This is a good question, as there are many activities to undertake that will help your product be compliant and have quality and reliability that reaches or exceeds your and your customers' expectations once it has been produced. I recently wrote about the typical NPI process we follow with clients and its many constituent activities in this post: … [Read more...]

DFX: 12 Product Design Optimizations You Could Be Making [Podcast]

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In this episode... Renaud is joined once again by Sofeast's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, to go over 12 'Design for Excellence/DfX' goals designers can optimize for when designing and developing a new product. These DfX principles include manufacturing, quality, reliability, maintainability, and more. Some are really important for bringing great products to market, and you'll learn which and why, as well as having the information you need to decide what to focus on for your … [Read more...]

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

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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...]

Developing a New Product? Think of Information Security Management.

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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

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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.

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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...]

How Bad Product Design Leads to Many Quality Issues

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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...]

Exploring The Benefits Of Rapid Prototyping And Rapid Tooling [Podcast]

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In This Episode... Renaud and Adrian talk about rapid prototyping and rapid tooling methods to make prototypes a lot faster than production tooling, with a focus on electromechanical products and plastic injection molding. You'll get answers to the following questions: What are rapid prototyping and rapid tooling? What do we discover from different rounds of prototyping? What are the features of hard tooling? What are the pros and cons of the different technologies used for rapid … [Read more...]