Blog Archives

Prevent Quality Issues With Your Factory

March 19 2013  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips  |  Comment

The Leardon Solutions Logo Represents Innovation And Quality From Medical Devices To Consumer GoodsQuality Control

A great factory relationship for a product development team is nothing short of a god send. However, until you have that relationship established, usually through a lot of business, the entrepreneur or startup can find themselves in a difficult situation with costs, quality and delivery.

Quality can often be the center of attention when product starts arriving to customers and the feedback is not all positive.

So how does an entrepreneur / startup team avoid quality issues when working with new or existing factory relationships?

One way NOT to handle it is through traditional finger pointing. Fewer things outside of finger pointing will guarantee irreparable damage to your customer / factory relationship quicker than asserting blame instead of focusing on solving the most pressing problems that are hording resources and stalling the product development lifecycle and manufacturing.

Often entrepreneurs / startups are quick to terminate the relationship with the factory based on quality , costs and delivery issues. We always encourage working with the factories and vendors already in place to resolve issues. The reality is, there will always be issues regardless of how good the team or factory is. Identifying a new factory, moving tooling and getting contracts into place with no guarantee of resolving the current issue at hand can be a tremendous waste of time and money.

If you find you and your team in over your heads with your current factory relationships, it would be a good time to bring in a project based or hourly consultant that has experience in your industry and relationships with factories. By doing so, you are reducing risk and decreasing your time to market.

If you have questions about your factory relationships and quality control, please contact us.

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A Tip To Navigate Around Minimum Order Quantity

February 26 2013  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips  |  1 Comment

The Leardon Solutions Logo Represents Innovation And Quality From Medical Devices To Consumer Goods

Minimum Order Quantity

One aspect of product development that often catches people new to product development by surprise is the practice of minimum order quantity.

Minimum order quantity is the minimum order a vendor will take before beginning work on your product. When it comes time to manufacture your product, minimum order quantity or the “M.O.Q.” as it is known will be a large part of every manufacturing decision that you’ll have to make.

So how do you navigate around an M.O.Q. as a startup or small business that doesn’t need 60,000 of the widgets that you will be producing? Maybe you only need a 1000 or 100 just to test the market before committing to larger quantities. The low number M.O.Q. can be a significant hurdle to overcome.

One very effective way to reduce the M.O.Q requirements is to have a great relationship with your manufacturer of choice, this will carry a lot of weight when it come to negotiating an order quantity that is affordable for you and fair for the manufacturer – this is especially true overseas where business and personal relationships often overlap.

If you know that you want to have small trial run of your product before committing to a larger order then it would be wise to partner with a team of folks that have relationships with manufacturers in your industry. By doing so, you are also adding some level of quality control to the manufacturing process. This can be especially important if the factory is far away and you can’t afford to have people there to audit the end product before it is packaged and shipped.

Have questions about your MOQ? Contact Us for assistance.

 

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Tips To Reduce Your Product Development Minimum Order Quantity

February 19 2013  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips  |  Comment

The Leardon Solutions Logo Represents Innovation And Quality From Medical Devices To Consumer GoodsMinimum Order Quantity

or “MOQ” as it is known in the manufacturing industry simply defines the number of units that a manufacturer requires before accepting an order.

Manufacturers make their profit margins and keep costs down by producing products in large quantities. This cost savings practice directly impacts the manufactured product.

M.O.Q.s affects every type of manufacturing from screws to complicated medical devices and consumer products. Understanding how an M.O.Q. works is vital to the success of a product.

If you are an entrepreneur, startup or small businesses and negotiating minimum order quantities is not your specialty, The Leardon Solutions team recommends that you find someone to work with that can help use an M.O.Q. to your advantage.

There are several factors that affect the M.O.Q. – Here are a few.

1) First off, not all manufacturers have the same M.O.Q. for a product. Shop your prototype around and get quotes to compare. What you are likely to discover is that there will be large discrepancy between some quotes and others. This could be for a number of reasons – all of which should be explored before signing on the dotted line.

2) Core Competencies -

The core competency of a manufacturer can impact the M.O.Q. of a product. A manufacturer may or may not have experience building a product like yours. If they do and they can re-purpose a strategy or equipment already set up the M.O.Q. may be reduced.

3) Manufacturer Relationships

Like many other industries, great relationships go a long way with manufacturing. Working with a team or individual that has built a relationship with manufacturers will give an entrepreneur, startup team or small business a BIG competitive advantage. An example of this would be working with a top tier manufacturer while producing a relatively low number of products on the first round. The benefits of a large manufacturer are quality control, stronger core competencies and sometimes more efficient workflows that help reduce costs.

Have questions about minimum order quantities, please contact us Here.

 

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Product Development Is NOT Product Manufacturing

January 24 2013  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips, Product Development  |  Comment

Joe Donoghue, San Diego Prototyping, Patents & Prototypes, Live Web Show, Product Development, Engineering Services, Manufacturing, Entrepreneurial Product DevelopmentIf you are looking to develop a product, it’s important to know the key differences between product development and product manufacturing. The two terms are often confused and the expectations of each are vastly different.

What Is Product Development?

Product development requires that a creative team of engineers, industrial designers and program managers work in sync to solve unique problems related to functionality, design, standards and the costs of a product idea.

By in large, a process is followed and often referred to as the product development lifecycle. This lifecycle includes gates and checkpoints that help the product development team reduce failure rates, avoid common pitfalls and design the product for manufacturability.

Generally, the product development lifecycle can take far longer than the actual manufacturing of a product. When performed correctly, product development will reduce manufacturing time and costs by achieving the aforementioned goals.

Product Manufacturing

After the product development has been completed and production prototypes have been fully qualified, manufacturing is ready to begin. A well designed product can be replicated thousands of times with consistent performance results directly off the production line.

Comparatively, manufacturing a product is easier since most variables and unique problems to that particular product have been solved and worked into the production prototype which was designed with manufacturability in mind.

Common pitfalls to watch for during product manufacturing include quality control, materials sourcing issues, labor problems and missed delivery dates.

If you have questions about product development or manufacturing, please contact us here for more information.

 

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Secrets Of Crowdfunding Success

December 11 2012  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Crowdfunding, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips, Prototyping, Supplier Management  |  Comment

Joe Donoghue, San Diego Prototyping, Patents & Prototypes, Live Web Show, Product Development, Engineering Services, Manufacturing, Entrepreneurial Product DevelopmentSecrets of Crowdfunding Success

Crowdfunding hasn’t been around long, but it changed the face of product development by allowing people to vote with their money and that is a powerful thing when it comes to preparing product for market. At Leardon we have had the privilege to work with crowdfunded entrepreneurs. In doing so, we’ve compiled some advice based on our experiences. 

A quick list of our recommendations for crowdfunding success:

1) For better or worse, Your product is in the public eye.

    Our advice: Attempt to lock in quotes and estimates prior to raising any funding. Once your campaign is successful, vendors and service providers will not have to look too hard to find out how deep your pockets are. Be strategic to avoid being taken advantage of. 

2) The 80 / 20 Rule

     Our advice: A fancy prototype can get you pretty far, but successfully crowdfunded entrepreneurs have told us how surprised they were to have to do an extreme amount of marketing. If your campaign is successful, it may be because you spent 80% of your time marketing it and 20% doing everything else. Don’t hesitate to reach out to every single person you know to ask them to spread the word. Make it easy for them to share the information and remember to include a call to action in everything. Social media, local TV, blogs and experts will work to your advantage, make relationships prior to the campaign launch. 

3) Design for manufacturability

     Finding out your prototype isn’t manufacturable sucks, but it really really sucks after you’ve taken 50k in orders.
    Our advice: Prototype as far you can until you absolutely need funding. Regardless if your idea is software or hardware, always consider designing for scalability. If you are unfamiliar with this process, reach out to product development teams that specialize in end-to-end product development and that can design for manufacturability.

4) Walk the Walk – Talk the Talk :

Let’s face it, until manufacturing comes back the US, chances are that you will be building your products overseas to compete with global competition. You may find yourself in a sticky situation if you do not know much about your partners overseas.
    Our advice : Consider finding service providers that have reps, project managers, engineers, ect..  in the areas where you will be manufacturing. Their ability to perform a factory audit, speak with factory managers and correct issues before you start shipping product to customers will save face and your business. 

5) Watch every cent, do what you know how to do well and get help when you are far out of your comfort zone. 

For questions related to product development, please reach feel free to contact us.

 

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Product Development – Improve Your Supplier Relationship

October 23 2012  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Business Tips, Manufacturing, Supplier Management  |  Comment

Joe Donoghue, San Diego Prototyping, Patents & Prototypes, Live Web Show, Product Development, Engineering Services, Manufacturing, Entrepreneurial Product DevelopmentHow can I improve my supplier relationship?

We get many supplier relationship questions via our website, but one of the most asked supplier relationship questions is “How can I improve my supplier relationship?”.

Here at Leardon we are big proponents of developing a set of core supplier/partners and working with them over time to continuously improve our value to our clients. But most of the time the above question is being posed because the client is experiencing problems with their suppliers and improving the “relationship” may have little or no effect on solving the problems. So the first step is separate the problem solving from the strategic process of supplier selection and development. With your set of suppliers selected, here are a few guiding principles to help improve your on-going business relationship.

#1) Match the supplier’s capabilities to the requirements of the job.

No matter how good the relationship starts out to be it will fail if you are asking a supplier to do something that is beyond their capabilities.

#2 Increase the transparency between you and your key suppliers.

Items to consider sharing are current and future product plans, sales and marketing motion, operations processes and plans, top level cost structures, etc. The intent is to share what is necessary with your suppliers so they can plan more effectively to meet your cost, quality, agility, and delivery needs.

#3 Establish a regular review process between organizations.

These review processes should recognize the good stuff happening on both sides as well as the areas for opportunity. This is not a “pointing-the-finger” meeting but rather a significant part of a continuous improvement process both in the relationship and the business.

The great benefit of supply chain management, and developing a better relationships is that when all of the channel members – suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers – behave as if they are part of the same company, they can enhance performance significantly across the board.

Do you have supplier relationship questions or product development questions? Feel free to contact us for more information.

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Best Tips To Design For Manufacturing or DFM

October 9 2012  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Business Tips, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips  |  Comment

Joe Donoghue, San Diego Prototyping, Patents & Prototypes, Live Web Show, Product Development, Engineering Services, Manufacturing, Entrepreneurial Product Development

A list of tips to consider when you begin to design for manufacturing ( DFM )

 

 

Designing for Production

The maker movement is on. Mass production is no longer a game only to be played by corporate giants. The internet has given individual inventors, entrepreneurs, startups and  small to medium sized businesses the tools and communities to market, fundraise, and distribute their products. Anyone with an idea can bring that idea to consumers as a product with speed and cost efficiency never available before.

However, a good idea will only get you so far. As an electrical engineer working with inventors on a daily basis, I see people falling into the same pitfalls over and over again. Their ideas are good and they are always well motivated but they typically are not production minded. A working prototype is a great way to show investors and customers what a product does but if that prototype cannot be reproduced in a reliable and inexpensive manner, you’ll have to invest time and money getting your design ready for production. Keep in mind that the term production doesn’t have to refer to a massive factory; production can be done in your living room. Regardless, the same principles still apply: the less time you spend putting something together, the more time you’ll have to do other things that drive your business. You should be thinking about production as early as the prototyping phase. Why do something twice when you can do it right the first time?

With that primer, here are some quick tips on production for electronic designers / entrepreneurs / inventors to be thinking about when it is time to design for manufacturing.

 

Design for Manufacturing

You know those little things that annoyed you while you were building your prototype? Like how hard it was to plug in the connectors because too many tall components were nearby? Or how you had to repair a PCB because a trace was routed to close to the board edge and was sheared off? Well, imagine how annoyed you’ll be dealing with those issues over and over again in production. And if someone else is manufacturing the product for you, it’ll annoy them too and they’ll make sure you pay for that annoyance in dollars. Trust me, contract manufactures know what they’re doing. They’ll spot manufacturing issues from a mile away and include that cost in your quote. Take advantage of that knowledge: show your design to a contract manufacturer. They’ll let you know the issues and how to resolve them.

Design for Reliability

Nothing does more damage to your bottom line and brand than a product failure in the field. The way to reduce failures is to design with margin and test, test, test. Test the margins in your system while you are prototyping. What if you increase your clock speed? Can your design handle it? Operating on the edge of the capabilities of the board design is a recipe for disaster because the stars will align eventually and you’ll experience failures. Be sure to test the life of your product too. What’s your product meant to do? Whatever it is, find a way to repeatedly test that functionality over and over again day and night. Your goal is to test years of normal use in a period of days or weeks. Any issues you find and resolve during life testing is one less defect users will experience.  This means happier customers and less time and money spent on resolving failures in the field.

For more information, please feel free to contact us.

This article is written by Ryan Wilshusen, The director of engineering at Leardon Solutions

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Product Qualification : What To Know

September 25 2012  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Business Tips, Manufacturing, Product Development  |  Comment

Leardon Solutions Product Development

All About Product Qualification

One aspect of product development that is often overlooked and forgotten is product qualification. Product qualification refers to the tests that are done on prototypes or the final product to be sure that it will properly operate across all external conditions and will conform to all government regulations. Without these tests, the product development is incomplete. Here are some examples of things that have gone wrong on improperly qualified products.

  • After a long ocean shipment from Asia, an excited entrepreneur receives their shipment only to find that all the polyethylene bags that the product was packed has stuck to the product.
  • A customer purchases their product and quickly realizes that the display cannot be seen in normal outside daylight.
  • When a product is received on a pallet shipment, the products on the bottom of the pallet are smashed and destroyed.
  • When a company decides that they want to sell their product in Europe, they realize that their electronics aren’t suitable for the hazardous waste requirements in the region.
  • A new company has a hit product that sells 15,000 units in 3 weeks. After 1 month in the market, customers start returning the products since the labels start to come off of the product, making it unusable.

These are only a few examples of what can go wrong when the product isn’t qualified properly. Some of these examples might not seem too severe but all of these issues resulted in the company spending a large sum of money to rectify the situation and solve the problem. This could have been avoided if the product qualification was done properly from the start. Below, we outline the steps that should be taken to properly qualify your product. Even though it might be tempting to take a risk and skip some of the qualification steps to save money, it is not recommended.

  • List out all the normal operating conditions of your product. At what temperature will it be used? Will it be used with in the rain? Will it be used at high altitude? These are only some of the questions to be answered but it is imperative that you understand how your product will be used.
  • Determine the extreme conditions that the product (packaged and unpackaged) will need to withstand. In this step, think of all the extreme conditions that your product MIGHT need to withstand. Remember that you have no control on how your customers or shipping company treat your product, so expect that they will do the worst things possible to it. The product will get baked in a hot car, will get dropped in a gutter, will get kicked off of a table, and could possibly be stepped on. Determine which conditions you want your product to withstand and those which the product does not need to withstand.
  • List out each country that your product will be sold. Research what regulations are required to sell in that country. In Europe, you will need a CE mark. In the United States, you might need to get FDA approval. Each regulation will require some sort of testing which must be performed and passed.
  • Translate all the conditions and regulations into actual tests to be performed on your prototypes or production units. Examples of these tests include environmental stress tests, transportation tests, operating environment tests, electrical tests, and safety tests. A test lab will have standard test equipment that is used to run each of these tests.
  • Work with a laboratory to perform the test suite as required.

Product qualification and testing is a critical step in the product development life cycle. Be sure that the product passes the qualification tests prior to starting production and selling your product. While this phase of product qualification might seem excessive and expensive, remember that it is always less expensive to do the qualification properly from the start rather than hoping that nothing will go wrong. If something can go wrong, it most likely will go wrong.

If you need more information on the correct way to qualify your product, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team has years of experience qualifying products and designing quality into the product from the beginning. Please contact us with any questions or contact me directly at joseph.donoghue ( at ) leardon.com

A Quick Overview of Bioplastics

September 11 2012  |   Cliff  |  All Posts, Manufacturing, News, Prototyping  |  Comment

Leardon Solutions Product Development, Joe Donoghue, San Diego, prototyping, manufacturingIf you’re new to product development and exploring the possibility of taking your idea to the next level by building a physical prototype, it may be time to research materials from which you would like to develop your prototype and product.

There are many materials on the market to choose from and some of which belong to the family of bioplastics ( biodegradable plastics )

With a name like “bioplastic” or “biodegradable plastic” one might think these terms refer to a state of the art chemical composition that is on the bleeding edge of technology. To some degree that is true, but the reality is, versions of bioplastics have been around long enough to find their way into the first cars rolling off the Ford production line as early as 1934. You can read more about that here.

The advantages of bioplastics as of this blog post writing look promising. These plastics are made from a variety of sources using organic compounds such as soy beans, corn, potato starch and possibly new potential sources such as carbon based waste water.

Some notable characteristics of bioplastics:

• If disposed of correctly, most bioplastics break down in the environment faster and without the harmful chemicals associated with traditional oil based plastics.

• As the cost of oil goes up, so do the prices of oil based plastics leaving plastics derived from other sources a viable option for future cost reduction in plastics manufacturing. However, these costs must be evaluated carefully as there seems to be conflicting views on the true financial short and long term benefits of bioplastics. Here is a great article that looks at the financial aspects.

• Bioplastics are considered a renewable resource since they are derived form a bio mass ( trees, crops, ect..)

Some other things to consider:

• Some bioplastics are still early in their development and require further testing per their specific application ( durability, longevity, cost )

• Most bioplastic technologies are new and cost prohibitive at this time. Read more about types of bioplastics here.

Bookmark our blog as we will continue to release new updates about bioplastics as they become available.

We would love to hear about your experience if you have worked with bioplastics.

Have questions about bioplastics, manufacturing or product development? Please feel free to contact us.

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Product Development and Manufacturing Ten Commandments

September 4 2012  |   leardonsolutions  |  All Posts, Business Tips, Engineering, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Tips, Northern Ireland, Product Development, Prototyping, San Diego  |  Comment

Leardon Solutions Product Development, Manufacturing, San Diego, Ireland, Southern California, Inventor, SME, Joe Donoghue

The Product Development and Manufacturing Ten Commandments

All product development teams that have gone through a full development cycle to design, prototype, and manufacture their product have learned that there are a set of rules that when followed result in a streamlined and successful process. Some SMEs and entrepreneurs learn this the hard way by making mistakes while others hire experts in the field who have the experience to prevent the mistakes. It doesn’t matter if you are a medium sized business in San Diego, Southern California or a entrepreneurial start-up company in Northern Ireland, the rules are the same and must be followed for success. We have taken decades of product development experience from our team and created the Product Development and Manufacturing Ten Commandments to benefit our readers.

1. Avoid feature creep by rigorously defining your product before making or designing any prototypes.

2. Decide if the product features, the project/product cost, or the project schedule is the most important project priority and manage the program appropriately.

3. Make early Proof-of-Concept and Integrated Design Prototypes to validate the product functionality.

4. Work with one service provider to avoid multiple design hand-offs during the development life cycle and increase accountability. This is typically considered an end-to-end solution.

5. Maintain a strong relationship with the chosen manufacturing supplier and understand all cultural differences.

6. Only release the design for production tooling when all prototype qualification is complete and purchase the appropriate tooling based on quantity, expected part prices, and tool life.

7. Before starting production of customer-shippable products, qualify all the production tools, parts, and the final product.

8. Allow enough time to make the initial order of customer products and staff appropriately with design and manufacturing engineers to resolve the inevitable issues encountered.

9. Only make changes to the design or manufacturing processes in production when there are serious issues that result in safety or shipment issues.

10. Manage the stable production and don’t get complacent.

If you have questions about any of these Product Development and Manufacturing Ten Commandments, please feel free to contact us.

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