Hardware Marathon: Installment 5
This post is the fifth in the series, “The Hardware Marathon.” In this series, I discuss the process involved in developing a hardware product from concept to production.
Our runner glances up to see the 11th mile marker. The race has been mostly fun up to this point and a sense of accomplishment of overcoming the first significant hill. But there is still a lot of ground to cover with diminishing resources in the body. Over half of the race is left, but the hardest amount of work lies ahead. Our runner steels their mind, makes the turn in front of them and continues to place one foot after another on the hard pavement.
In the hardware marathon, we are at an inflection point with the beginning of the Alpha phase. The iterations so far have worked out the feature-set and clarified what the market wants, which may have involved pivoting from the plan a time or three. Going forward, the iterations will be about ensuring the design meets the requirements with a focused eye on manufacturing.
Requirements: The Compass
During Concept and MVP phases, you’ve been able to test out different functions, features, and get market feedback to guide product development. You’ve been careful to record the results in the product’s requirements document. If that hasn’t been completed, now is the time to do so. The requirements should cover every aspect of the product from function to operating conditions to user interface to appearance and more.
Once you have the complete list, it is also worth the time to rank them in these bins:
- Musts – these are non-negotiable, must-haves for the product to go to market. These represent the “minimal viable product” for the market and the necessary regulatory requirements.
- Wants – these are where the negotiations begin. These are desirable rather than critical musts for the product as you come up against design hurdles. The product will still meet market demands, but if they cannot be achieved due to timeline or cost, set them aside for the next version.
- Nice–to–haves – these are the ‘bonus’ features that are added if they don’t impact the development schedule nor add a lot of cost to the product. They might be premium features that a targeted customer group would pay extra for in the next version.
“In a startup world, you have a certain amount of money and you’re never going to get to perfect by release. So you have to prioritize the functionally that is ‘must have’ instead of ‘nice-to-have.’ If there’s time, you make those function, but maybe you do a software or firmware release down the road and you make changes to that functionally later,” said Joe Steinman, Lead Mechanical Engineer at Zebulon Solutions.
Through the development process you will be faced with many trade-off decisions. Having clearly defined and ranked requirements will guide your discussions.
Designing with Manufacturing in Mind
Considering how the product is going to be manufactured is important during this phase and will save significant time and resources as you prepare for Pilot. The design activities in Alpha are more about engineering and designing a product that meets the requirements. It is also important to consider how the product will be manufactured. The team should balance fulfilling every requirement with the ability to build at volume. The goal of this stage is to see what the manufactured product will look like for the first time and if it really meets the requirements.
“The Alpha stage is the process of going from that large hand-built board to one that fits in a custom mechanical enclosure. This is the first pass at distilling everything down into a functional unit to be tested,” said Dr. Todd Hochwitz, Lead Electrical Engineer at Zebulon Solutions.
During earlier phases, the overall appearance of the design may have been printed as one part, but now the design needs to be broken down into pieces and parts to be fabricated individually. Not only should consideration be given to how the parts will be fabricated, but also how they will be assembled together. The CAD needs to be detailed and the first mechanical drawings generated to begin identifying key dimensions and fabrication or assembly notes.
While it is a good practice to design multi-part sourcing into the system, there are constraints with costs, design, lead times and availability of parts. Trade-offs in performance or size are weighed against the realities of manufacturing.
While thinking about manufacturing for design, it is also important to start identifying potential production suppliers and contract manufacturers. We provide some guidance for how to get started in our Supplier Selection blog.
Pull it All Together
Once the design of each unique component is completed, it is important to fabricate and evaluate them separately, noting how well they fit together. Up to this point, you’ve used rapid prototype processes and will likely use them in Alpha to leverage their agility and speed. The key difference is that instead of printing the entire enclosure, for example, you would print each part separately and assemble them. This will give you a chance to evaluate how the surfaces fit together and the overall appearance of the ‘final’ design.
At some point during Alpha, all the parts will be assembled to ensure they fit together and function as a system. Don’t be discouraged if you need to iterate a few times to ensure your design meets the requirements.
“We may do one or two more iterations on the Alpha builds to dial it in. This is where we really focus on the interaction between the mechanical and the electrical, and how the end user interacts with the functionality. We hand it off to the end user so they can evaluate it—up to that point it is just the engineers that have really done a lot with it,” said Hochwitz.
One time-saving activity that can be done now is to capture how the parts will be assembled during Alpha and Beta. A good practice is to start taking photos of key assembly steps and documenting how it is put together.
Engineering Validation Testing (EVT)
Once all the parts are assembled, it is important to see how they perform against the requirements. Alpha begins the formalized process of requirements validation and verification testing that will be repeated for each of the coming phases. The testing in Alpha is frequently referred to as “EVT” or Engineering validation testing.
It is highly recommended to create a test plan from the requirements document to ensure no requirement is overlooked. You will test one or maybe a handful of parts for each requirement under actual or estimated conditions. It is important to identify any design weaknesses in the product before it exists in the marketplace. Any failure identified during Alpha should be taken seriously and addressed in the design or assembly process.
Getting Ready for Beta
Alpha has been grueling to get the product to meet all the necessary requirements and the timeline may have extended as unexpected failures occurred during EVT. But finally, all parts fit nicely together, and the system is passing EVT, so you can move into the next phase, Beta. While Alpha considered the manufacturing process, Beta will ensure the parts are ready for production.
As our runner approaches mile 19, the mental “wall” must be overcome. With the body cramping or starting to feel sluggish, and every part hurting from the repeated pounding against the pavement, yet so many miles left ahead. The race now becomes as much a mental game as physical. It’s time to dig deep.
