Category: Product Development

Zebulon Solutions Acquires JSL Solutions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Kirsten O’Donoghue
720-204-8177
kirsten@zebulonsolutions.com

www.zebulonsolutions.com

Zebulon Solutions Acquires JSL Solutions

Colorado-based hardware solutions companies expand their product development and operations services offerings

Longmont, Colorado, July 22, 2019—Zebulon Solutions of Longmont, Colorado announced today that it has completed the acquisition of JSL Solutions of Westminster, Colorado, an operations consulting company.

Jenney Loper, JSL Solutions’ founder, said, “One of the many reasons I chose to align with Zebulon Solutions is that they consider manufacturing throughout the entire product development process. They don’t just design a product and throw it over the wall, but continue to be involved until manufacturing is scaled.”

“We’re delighted to add JSL Solutions’ world-class operations consulting and supply chain expertise to our end-to-end product development offering,” said Chuck Hodges, CEO of Zebulon Solutions. “We’ve worked with Jenney on several projects over the past years. She has really figured out how to ‘take the hard out of hardware,’ and our mutual customers love her. With Jenney onboard, our ability to make products manufacturing-ready will be greatly enhanced.”

Matt Brzezinski, Head of Hardware at Misty Robotics, added, “Jenney brings a wealth of high-volume experience with her to the design reviews, always feeding back input to the design team to enable the most cost-effective design. She would be a tremendous asset for your company and has my highest recommendation.”

Jenney Loper is joining Zebulon Solutions as Director of Operations, focusing on building operational infrastructure for customers. With her experience working closely with startup businesses, Jenney will expand Zebulon Solutions’ fractional Chief Operations Officer (Fractional COO) service offerings.

For additional information, contact Kirsten O’Donoghue of Zebulon Solutions at 720-204-8177 or visit www.zebulonsolutions.com.

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Zebulon Solutions is a global product design and supply chain services company, focused on getting products out of R&D and into stable manufacturing. Key services include product design and development, supply chain optimization, and operational consulting.

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Risk Vs. Reward with Rapid/Virtual Prototyping

You might think utilizing rapid or even virtual prototyping eliminates the need to build fully functional prototypes before heading into production. After all, building a fully-functional prototype takes time and often considerable money, depending on the complexity of the product. It seems once you’ve run all the simulations and worked out any bugs virtually, your product should or could be ready for production. While it may be tempting to follow that route, for more complex products there are elements and conditions that can truly never be predicted by simulations or virtual testing. But even products that are designed virtually and then produced as working prototypes can still run afoul without diligent product testing.

Producing real-life scenarios that expose the demands of a product outside of the lab and that are intended to expose any deficiencies or critical issues of the product as a whole, as well as all of its moving parts, is a critical step in designing a product for manufacturability. Ample testing on a physical prototype should help with the success of the product in the marketplace as well. 

Risk Versus Reward with Rapid/Virtual Prototyping

by Dr. Todd Hochwitz

When I started my career many (many) years ago, prototyping consisted of walking paper drawings down to the machinists for them to be turned into reality.  Sometimes I had results in days, but more often weeks. However, with the pressures on engineers to operate faster, cheaper, and more efficiently, rapid and even virtual prototyping has become common. Now with the push of a mouse or keyboard button I can have something in a matter of hours or days.  That reduction time is clearly an improvement, right?

Sometimes yes, but sometimes no.  While it’s nice to be able to see photo-rendered drawings on a monitor, being able to hold something in my hand and get a true feel of the product is better.  Having something physical makes the product seem more real, and allows engineers like me to understand nuances of how we’ll actually be able to assemble the item.

However, rapid/virtual prototyping is only one important part of the toolbox.  Why isn’t it the perfect fit for everything?  There are a few reasons:

  1. The biggest problem we encounter is that the rapid/virtual prototyping design was made around 3D printing and not actual tooling that is typically used for volume manufacturing. You can easily make a CAD model that can be 3D printed, but that doesn’t mean that a particular design can be molded or stamped or cast.
  2. Some characteristics of rapid prototyped materials are very different from machined or injection molded versions. While we’ve had great success using printed parts during the development phase, when it comes to some types of testing, they fall short.  They may leak, shear, shatter, or undergo different thermal/mechanical behavior than the final versions.
  3. Simulations are a wonderful tool to quickly invalidate obviously-flawed designs, but they are typically not sufficient to prove a design. The models used, and numerical methods employed, do not always reflect every aspect of the environment that the part will be exposed to.  And more importantly, they don’t reflect the unpredictable human element.

One famous such example is the Galaxy Note 7. It was developed in a virtual environment and put through the typical simulation process to expose deficiencies and critical flaws. A working prototype was designed yet, when the prototype of this smart phone went to manufacturing (and then onto the marketplace), it was quickly clear that a significant flaw had been missed in the phone’s battery power source. Clearly, it’s important to not only make sure the product, as a whole, actually works, but to also be sure that all the moving parts are suitable for real-world demands.  Not only was this missed flaw a significant safety hazard to anyone using the phone, but a branding disaster. It’s very difficult to undo the damage to the reputation of a product that is infamous for smoking, catching fire, or exploding.

While we do rely upon rapid/virtual prototyping as much as we are able, we always keep in mind the limits of those tools.  Using them allows us to quickly get close to a final design as long as we keep the real manufacturing process in mind, and understand the limitations of the models behind the simulations.  There are always tradeoffs to consider, corner cases to address, but at Zebulon Solutions, we pride ourselves on being open and transparent with our customers which sometimes means telling them what they need to hear versus what they want to hear. We help our customers work through these challenges to yield a manufacturing-ready product.

Check out all of our Product Design Services.

Zebulon Solutions: We Design, We Test, We Break Things.

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Zebulon Solutions is Ten Years old!

Zebulon Solutions Quarterly Review

 

A few words from the CEO

Ten years ago, a former contract manufacturing colleague of mine and I started Zebulon Solutions.  Our first digs were in an unairconditioned room with particle board flooring above a tiny coffee roaster in Berthoud, Colorado. After years of playing the global shell game of chasing ever-lower-cost resources around the planet with ever-more-complicated contracts and beat-up-the-vendor mentalities, we were ready to get back to an old-fashioned way of doing business. We choose the name Zebulon as a way to tap a little bit of that old-timey vibe, as well as pay subtle tribute to our Colorado roots (Zebulon Pike was an early nineteenth-century explorer and the namesake of Colorado’s iconic Pike’s Peak).

    Lots of things have changed since then. We have a real office and lab, with real air conditioning, and scores of satisfied customers around the planet. We’ve leveraged our global experience to find the best supply chain solutions for our customers, and we’ve added in world-class design capabilities. But at the end of the day, we still try to do business in an old-fashioned manner, where a handshake (or its Slack equivalent) means something.

  •    – Chuck

 

What We’ve Been Up To

Sponsoring  A Neeley Home at the Colorado Oil and Gas Association Chili Cook-Off.

        

Checking out all kinds of new products and technologies at the Start Up Grind Global Conference s in Redwood City.

Exhibiting at Rocky Mountain Venture Club’s Annual Angel Capital Summit

ZEBULON SHOUT OUT!

The Power of Poop

Fecal sludge as a fuel: characterization, cofire limits, and evaluation of quality improvement measures 

Lauren M. Hafford | Barbara J. Ward | Alan W. Weimer |Karl Linden

Our team here at Zebulon Solutions have worked on some unique and interesting projects other than just our projects here at Zebulon Solutions.  For example, Lauren Hafford, our Senior Mechanical Engineer, has been working with a team from CU (co-author BJ Ward, and Drs. Karl Linden and Al Weimer). They all worked tirelessly on the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge at CU Boulder driven by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To learn more about the team click here.

Congratulations to Lauren and her team on being published!  The article about using fecal sludge as a fuel in coal-fired power plants was published in the Journal of Water, Science, and Technology. Here is an excerpt from the article or read the full article here.

“In many low-income cities, a high proportion of fecal sludge, the excreta, and blackwater collected from on-site sanitation systems such as pit latrines, is not safely managed. This constitutes a major danger to environmental and human health. The water, sanitation, and hygiene sector have recognized that valorization of treated fecal sludge could offset the upfront cost of treatment by using it as a fuel source. The few quantitative studies on fecal sludge fuel published to date have focused on heating value, moisture, ash fraction, and heavy metals. However, other factors impacting fuel utility, specifically ash speciation, have not been adequately quantified for fecal sludge. This study contributes to closing that gap and shows the value of more detailed quantification. It first characterizes fecal sludge samples from Colorado and Uganda, confirms that the fuel is better if cofired with other biomass, and outlines a framework for determining safe cofire ratios. Second, the study evaluates two methods for improving fecal sludge as a fuel: carbonization and ash leaching. Carbonization of fecal sludge did not improve fuel quality, but leaching showed promise in ash reduction”.

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INTERNET OF THINGS….IT’S HERE!

How IoT Impacts our Daily Life

When I was young, my family and I traveled around the southwestern United States. While we were in Arizona, we went to visit something called, “The House of the Future.” It was a showcase house filled with automated devices that were run by the house’s computer system. The tenant was in complete control, able to make important decisions about their living environment, which were then executed by the home’s microcomputer system.

Fast forward a few decades and that house is still there but seems more like a relic of the past yet, The House of the Future was on the cusp of a smart house age to come. Now that age has arrived. The Internet of Things (IoT) is here. I now work for a company, Zebulon Solutions, that works on all kinds of IoT devices, ranging from smart hockey pucks to 4000-pound smart transformers.

According to Business Insider, “The Internet of Things, commonly abbreviated as IoT, refers to the connection of devices (other than typical fare such as computers and smartphones) to the Internet.” So, what does that mean? It means that the internet has become “link-able” to things like watches, cars, and kitchen appliances. Really almost anything with an on/off switch can be connected through a network of integrated circuit boards, sensors, and satellites. This connectivity allows massive amounts of data to be generated, monitored and utilized in real time. The potential of such interconnectivity is amazing, overwhelming and, let’s admit it, a little worrisome. By 2020 it is predicted that there will be between 30-50 billion devices connected to IoT.

So what impact does IoT have on you? On us? As individuals and families, businesses and communities, as a country and society? And how will IoT affect our future?

The daily impact is already here. Just look around. Most people own or use a device or a variety of devices daily that are considered part of the Internet of Things. Smartphones, fitness trackers, GPS and locating devices, smart speakers, remote security and home automation devices, etc. The list is long and continues to grow and evolve.

According to Forbes, 84% of the growing IoT applications will be dominated by a few main industries: Smart Cities (26%), Industrial IoT (24%), Connected Health (20%), and Smart Homes (14%). What do these numbers mean?

While it simplifies matters to be able to identify the IoT devices (http://iotlist.co) and applications that directly affect us each day, the rapid growth of IoT is having an even more profound impact on industries and businesses, which in turn will again impact us all. The graph below outlines how some of those industries will fit into the most popular markets.

Source: internetofthingonlinestore.com

We will continue to delve into all these areas in upcoming blogs, but for now let’s start with some of what IoT provides to any industry, company, individual or group.

  1. Easy access remotely
  2. Enable process monitoring and management
  3. Accurate prediction
  4. Easy transfer of data

Wearables are a good category to start with when discussing basic and common uses for devices and apps included in IoT. Let’s take a smartwatch for example. The watch is capturing your biometric readings. This may alert you to a possible illness (accurate prediction) since you just spent the holidays with all your nieces, nephews and cousins. Smart speakers are another good example. You can talk to a smart speaker and give it tasks to do such as read a recipe, turn down the thermostat, or turn on music (enable process monitoring and management) as you prepare dinner. We’ll use home automation and security sensors for our last example. Both types of devices allow you to monitor what is going on at your home (Who’s at the front door? Is there a leak in the basement?) even if you aren’t home (easy transfer of data and easy access remotely).

While some major concerns pop up here, performance is key. That is where Zebulon Solutions comes in. It’s great to be able to see who’s at your front door while you’re at work, but the doorbell’s main function, the simple, ding- dong needs to work. Not only that, but what was once a simple passive circuit now needs a microprocessor, a secure wireless link to your Wi-Fi network or a cellular tower, motion sensors and a video camera. All able to function on a cold winter night in Breckenridge or a steamy summer day in Baton Rouge.  And it needs to be manufacturable, our real specialty. Let us help you develop your next IoT product and make it manufacturing-ready. To learn more, visit us at www.zebulonsolutions.com.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts where we will be discussing those concerns, along with how IoT will impact industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and energy.

 Posted by Kirsten O’Donoghue

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How to Become an Overnight Success!

How to Become an Overnight Success!

Recently, our team at Zebulon Solutions attended Denver Startup Week. Our own Dr. Todd Hochwitz teamed up with other subject matter experts in engineering, business development, product fulfillment, and supply chain management to discuss the journey and address the challenges of developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and how to get that product into actual scale production. (The Long Road: From MVP to Production)

While the experts shared a few funny (and a few horror) stories about companies that tried to take shortcuts along the way, one thing was clear; there are no shortcuts.  Overnight success is a highly sought-after myth.

Of course, no one wants to hear this!

Demonstrated by the widespread use and success of tools such as Google Maps or Waze, we are a society that loves the express lane. We’re always trying to find a faster or easier way to do things. But…what about the overnight success?

The Overnight Success Myth.

We have all seen it. Someone who seems to come out of nowhere and becomes immediately and massively famous or a new product that seems to make leaps of innovation overnight and is wildly successful.  How does this happen? Is it having extraordinary luck? Is it being born extremely talented or with a genius intellect? Is it knowing the right people or attending the right school?

The truth is it could be all, some or none of these things. The real secret to what many would call “overnight” success is not only knowing that there is no such thing but also understanding that it is almost always a combination of hard work, creativity, having the right network and team in place along with being ready when good opportunities come knocking. Of course, a little luck doesn’t hurt either!

So? How do you get to that spot? I thought you’d never ask! And Denver Startup Week seemed like a perfect time to get some insight into just this.

Because Denver Startup Week was full of speakers and sessions and people with passion, I took the opportunity to pick up some tips on success.

So, what were the top takeaways and tips from these experts? And what advice should we take from those who have “been there and done that”? How do we avoid shortcuts, but still save time?

Identify the areas in which you lack knowledge.

Once you have identified areas that you don’t understand, don’t possess the skill set for, or just lack the necessary level of proficiency to be successful, you can move onto the next question. Where do I find help?

 

How do I find someone to help me?

 Networking is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. I cannot emphasize enough how fundamental, yet crucial, this skill is when seeking out guidance and assistance. Some of the best people to ask for help are individuals who have been where you are right now, or where you will be soon.

And not just because they have “been there and done that”, but because they may save you precious and costly time in constructing an invaluable network of contacts. Especially here in the Denver market where our entrepreneurial ecosystem is small enough that the right help is often only one or two degrees of separation away, if not closer. Networking can be a mighty instrument in your arsenal when assembling the right team.

 

Assemble the right team.

Obviously, when you are assembling a team it is important to make sure you have the right players with the right skills, who play well together.  Many startup companies are constrained by limited resources, both human and capital, which can make putting together the best team a challenging undertaking. The most practical and cost-effective solution provided by our panel of experts was to make sure team members are all capable of wearing multiple hats.

 

According to Todd, building a multi-disciplined team that can function as a cohesive unit and provides end to end capabilities, allows entrepreneurs to effectively shift focus and resources as business needs evolve and grow.  While this team structure is ideal, it is often difficult to fully engage (and compensate) a team of this caliber when there are lags or delays in product development resulting in slower or stalled progress of the business.  For these reasons, it can be helpful to have the flexibility and on-demand expertise that Zebulon Solutions provides. We take great pride in our ability to expertly fulfill those types of fractional roles on ongoing or limited bases. To learn more visit our website at www.zebulonsolutions.com.

 

 

 

 

Written by:  Kirsten; With insights from Todd and Chuck

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New Logo

Designer Karl Lagerfeld once said “Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English–but are great in remembering signs.” Sure, Karl Lagerfeld designs women’s handbags for a living, but the man is right. Mr. Lagerfeld is experienced and smart enough to understand the importance of a good logo in any industry. Languages may not always translate, but signs can “speak” volumes. Thus the reason why it was so important to give our logo a fresh, updated and well-designed spin.

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