CEO and Founder, Steve Barcik Amstel with High Tech Design Safety noticed this reoccurring thing that he wants to share with you that will help any hardware development project…In this blog and video post, Steve reflects on a conversation he just had today….It is important to him to share some of the common things he sees working with companies and how you can benefit from the knowledge.
(Link to video also available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFB7v7R5E2w )
In the beginning of a project, Steve and the HTDS team start with a conversation with the client who is designing a new product and they’ll be designing it for a specific market, which means there’s going to be specific standards that have to be met once the product is produced, evaluated and certified.
His conversation today with the client went something like this…. (Client) well we’re working on the design and once we get done with the design and get prototypes in place and get that built then we’ll have you (Steve) come in to evaluate it…Well as a serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, and owner of a company that has help thousands of companies get their products to market, Steve gets that people are trying to save money and save time and think that they might be shortening their time to market when in fact, this dramatically increases time to market and costs. Steve finds that if clients bring him and his team in at the beginning, they can design it to the standards and do those design reviews at the beginning of the process and as they go along.
Since it is easier on him, his fees are not even incrementally more expensive. It doesn’t take a whole lot to design it in at the beginning, but if clients wait and try and evaluate it in, which isn’t possible, or have to make substantial changes to the product, they may end up redoing engineering two and three times. It costs more. It takes a lot more time and then there’s more often than not, internal resistance among the team and management to make those changes at that point because then it is truly impacting the cost of the product and truly impacting time to market.
What Steve is really communicating is how important it is to do design reviews at inception, to understand what the requirements are, to get the standards and to have someone like High Tech Design Safety or someone else do those conformity design reviews as you go along, so that once the prototype is built you know it’s going to conform, you’re clear on how to get there and like Steve points out, it’s a lot less expensive and in some cases orders of magnitude less expensive.
Steve is currently working with a client that didn’t do those early design reviews and it’s been extremely expensive to get there. Steve feels personally invested in the success of his clients and finds it so much more fun for him to help clients design it in and have the knowing that when they go to UL or TUV or CE marking or whatever is required that there is a high level of confidence that the product will pass or that any changes required will be little things that might need to be tweaked, or there might be a label or something in the manuals that needs to be added and Steve normally catch all of that.
So please hear Steve in this video as caring for you and your product development. Design it in. Let’s do those design reviews up front. If you’re looking to get your hardware product certified please reach out to us directly at https://hightechdesignsafety.com/
