We’re making money… now what?!

Congratulations! You’ve made it through the development process, and you’re selling a validated product. 

Does this mean everything’s perfect and we can walk off into the sunset?

I bet you already know the answer. No, we can’t.

Vendors change. 

Unexpected issues show up in the field. 

Cost reduction.

Quality improvement.

Those are a few of the things we can focus on during the Sustaining Engineering phase of our product’s life. 

It would be easy to think that “new features” would fall into this category as well, but I’d recommend thinking about something new as a new, but smaller engineering cycle, starting back at Proof of Concept or Concept Validation, and working through the process from start to finish.

Of course, we don’t have to perform sustaining engineering, but if we’re trying to build a company and a product that will last, it usually helps to keep paying attention to what we’re producing, and keep making it better.

-Brian Schoolcraft

Is this the best way to build my product?

Design Validation found any issues with the product itself, so now we're evaluating the process we use to manufacture it.

Ideally, Product Validation test articles will be manufactured in small batches on the actual assembly line that will be used in production. We're looking for possible variations in the assembly process, and making sure we have the right quality controls in place.

Is that torque value being set consistently? How do I confirm that this stack of parts is assembled in the correct orientation?

Our team's required skill set is often quite different in this phase of the validation process, shifting away from design engineering to manufacturing engineering. The design team stays involved, but their role is more consultation. This is the point where the manufacturing team begins to take over and prepare to produce our product in volume.

Have you included your process as a part of the validation program? If not, why?

-Brian Schoolcraft

Am I designing this the best way?

Concept Validation showed us that we were able to meet our product technical goals, but didn’t really test the “design” of the product. 

In Design Validation, we’re going to be building works-like looks-like versions of our eventual product. We may still use prototype manufacturing processes in non-critical areas, but most features are now using the “real” process so that we can confirm it looks and works like it should.

Our test scope is maturing along with the design. Instead of focusing only on key technical requirements, now we’re also looking at testing thermal extremes, water ingress, shock and vibration, durability, and other informative testing that isn’t directly related to the product’s functionality. This is also typically the step where any regulatory certification work would occur.

As has been the theme throughout the development process, this phase requires even more documentation and engineering rigor, and a team that excels at this kind of work. The flexibility and light process that was so useful during POC and CV starts to become a liability at this point, so we need more control over the process.

The amount of time and money spent on testing is ramping up quickly, and if we don’t know exactly what we’re testing, the results may end up useless. What if we find a failure on a month long durability test, but during teardown we realize we don’t know which design revision of the failed part was in this test article? Not good!

When we finish the DV phase, we should be pretty confident that we’ve found any big issues we’ll see during production or sale of the product. All we have to do now is get set up to make them at production volumes!

Do we have the right processes in place to know what we’re building and testing? Does our team use them? These are important questions!

-Brian Schoolcraft