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We are all product designers on some level. Whether a child dreaming of adding a fun accessory to a favorite toy, or an experienced engineer having a eureka moment, the world of invention is alive and well in all of us. So how do you take an idea that has realistic chances of having an impact and move it from your brain and into a fully functioning product?

The term “design thinking” is commonly used to describe the product design process as one that takes multiple processes and streamlines them into a singularly run process. This provides a seamless flow of tasks and operations from end to end. There are several best-practice product design phases you must understand before you try to convert your vision into a physical product.

1. Build an Understanding of the Intended Product Audience

No matter how innovative and revolutionary your product idea is, it will fall on deaf ears if it misses the mark with its intended audience. A key task to perform early in the product design process is to learn exactly what the expectations would be surrounding your product and if it would be a good fit for its intended audience. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Purchase marketing research to gauge the product’s market success.
• Enlist the help of a manufacturing partner that provides end-to-end services.
• Contact existing customers and solicit their input.

How you go about these tasks will vary and will be dependent on industry and product type. However, the information gained in this phase will be instrumental. It will tell you if you need to rethink the idea, change its audience, or if it is ready to go as is. This reduces risk factors and saves valuable time creating the design and when taking it to production.

2. Use This Information to Define Product Requirements

The information gathered from your intended audience will now be leveraged for the definition of product requirements. Your devised product requirements must include the below specifications to help keep your project on track throughout the design and testing phases:

• The right team configuration
• The physical dimensions of the final product
• Product functions and features
• Measurable testing and validation goals
• Tasks to create the appropriate support and user documentation
• A task runbook that includes accountability and transparency

One aspect that cannot be missed here is the development of cross-team collaboration. As the project advances, so does its complexity. You need to make sure that all of your teams, including your external product development consultants, are communicating and on the same page.

3. Design the Product Based on These Requirements

The first two steps have given you the necessary fundamentals to advance your project to the more advanced phases. At this point, you should be able to confidently hand over the keys to your project to the experienced hand of your CAD design team. This is where the rubber meets the road—it’s where your vision and the information gathered from the customer starts to become reality, for all of its innovations and the revealing of any potential flaws.

As experienced and talented as your CAD design team may be, there may be some elements of the new product that may escape notice. It is here that introducing an external engineering team to your project can start to yield benefits beyond just adding technical expertise. They will see things from a fresh perspective, and be able to quickly identify design efficiency gains or improvements that can be addressed without reinventing the wheel.

4. Create and Test Using Simulation and Rapid Prototypes

The testing phase of product development is important in terms of validation and to further prove your idea and research. There are two primary ways to test a product: through the use of CAD simulation, or using a prototype. Both have their pluses and minuses, but fortunately, these are all complementary. That makes using a combination of both a fantastic solution.

An engineering consultant can inject beneficial guidance here as well while helping to lower the risks of moving into production. In the ideal scenario, your engineering consultant will be able to offer a full array of services, including CAD simulation and rapid prototyping, thus giving a fully supportive product design partner that effortlessly collaborates with your internal product development team.

5. Execute the Right Manufacturing Strategy to Bring the Product to Market

Once testing has been accomplished, and your product is behaving per expectations, the time has come to start to build a manufacturing strategy. Using an engineering partner that has experience in new product launches is a perfect choice. Working as a manufacturing partner as well, they will help you to determine if a short-run or small-scale manufacturing strategy is best for your production scenario.

Your partner will also provide in-depth guidance around the post-production aspects of your project. Tasks such as distribution and support become documented and well-run aspects of the overall product development process. This type of production partner ensures that no stone is left unturned so that you put forth a complete product that is ready for action.

Efficiently Implement These Product Design Phases

The steps for developing a new product can be more than expected at the outset. You need concise documentation to track market research, technical consulting, and testing. A blended team of internal designers and external engineers that seamlessly collaborate lends a high level of expertise that serves your project well. Not only will tasks be kept on track and schedule, but you will at the end have a product that is performing at its highest potential.

Value added engineering is a broad term used to describe design options at the start of the new product development process. This method of engineering is meant to introduce a fresh set of eyes to an existing problem and to apply the most efficient solutions possible through the use of applicable pieces from other projects. The use of proven designs and parts to solve issues encountered during the product development process can have a positive impact on costs, timelines, and functionality.

How Does Value Added Engineering Contribute to Product Development?

Ideally, value added engineering is used during the beginning stages of a project to make certain determinations that lead to a design standing out from competing products. This focus:

• Compares product functionality to its anticipated production costs
• Takes an in-depth look into the materials and tools being used to provide the ideal spectrum of product features
• Helps obtain a clearer sense of the viability and profitability of a project

The resulting gains of using value added engineering come about through a process which allows a project team to blend innovative technology into proven product designs. Doing so breathes new life into stalled or seemingly stale project ideas. This is accomplished by addressing common project pain points through the leveraging of lessons learned and process enhancements gleaned from existing product lines, leading to rapid improvements in production processes.

Identify Pain Points Through Production Analysis

It is always tempting to push through project issues with the intention of resolving issues down the road in an effort to remain aligned to an established timeline. Unfortunately, this far too common approach can lead to inferior products or have the opposite effect on a project timeline. The first part of value added engineering—the identification of pain points through analysis— ensures that all efforts within a project from start to finish are painstakingly detailed and designed with precision. The process looks like this:

1. The initial concept is compared to similar project efforts as the engineering team seeks simple ways to use established parts and processes for the new design. 
2. Then, your team develops a strategy to implement the new with the old; even to the point of using parts from existing products as is or with slight modifications within the new product. 
3. This results in a seamless pairing of known production factors and processes with new, innovative wrinkles to maximize performance and cost-effectiveness.

Implement Changes Into the Design

Having a complete analysis in hand provides a project team with the necessary facts which supply the required design changes. But knowing the full weight that any one of these changes can have on a product is a little more difficult to forecast. Because of this, there may exist some critical design or performance gaps within the project—gaps that can lead to costly overruns or functional mistakes that can threaten the impact of your product on the market.

This is where the experience of an expert manufacturing consultant can be invaluable to a project initiative. They will lend the experience of past engagements to your project team, and work alongside them in a collaborative effort to implement the most crucial and necessary changes into the design. Doing so reduces potential waste points that can further impede the progress of product development instead of lending to its efficiency or a rapid development strategy.

Cost Reduction Through Efficiency

The addition of proven production methods and completing the design puzzle using proven part or system pieces is what ultimately drives cost reductions. Instead of building everything from the ground up, it becomes a matter of adding proven technology and system designs to the design concept to round out the functionality of a product. This hastens the pace of product development, which is only the start of the resulting cost reductions.

The use of established technology within an innovative new product saves time and money, from design and testing and through manufacturing. An engineering consultant will be able to further drive these cost reductions thanks to the volumes of technical resources they have accumulated from previous engagements. This blend of expertise, established best-practice processes, and supplemental technical staff will help your project get to the finish line faster and under budget.

Evaluation and Adjustment Must Follow a Precise Script

As wonderful as it would be to achieve perfection immediately, it is likely that some adjustments will need to be made to your product. Whether it is a flaw uncovered in a prototype, or a color scheme that doesn’t pass muster with your marketing team, you will want to have the ability to make an adjustment rapidly and at a minimum investment of costs and time. The processes used in discovery, remediation, and the execution of both, are of vital importance to minimize risks.

The most effective methodology to adopt for maintaining vigilance over your creation is to create and execute a set of repetitive scripted tasks. The ability to build and utilize a script that provides an efficient way to execute a consistent cycle of evaluation and adjustments becomes even better with the input from an experienced partner. Your partner will have likely been there before, so why not use what they can bring to the table to reduce costs and risks in producing your vision?

Value Added Engineering Gives You a Powerful Partner

Using value added engineering helps your project team compare product functionality to cost of production. From here, you can leverage proven design and production strategies to reduce risks and costs, while adding known components into your innovative design will cut timelines, giving you a powerful partner as you drive your project forward.