Don’t you hate it when your project cost creeps higher and higher during development of a new product? It leaves you leading your project team into an immediate cost-reduction phase prior to going to market…not an ideal situation.
To help you avoid such a scenario, we’ve put together HUI’s top five ways to keep the target price equal to the production price.
1. Design to a Production Price Point
Identify a production price range and tooling budget prior to starting any of your project activities. Also, maintain a revision-controlled scope document that details project needs so the industrial designer has the most current information about how to design the product. Having the scope document revision-controlled helps track when features are added and how they affect the cost target. You should only submit industrial design concepts that are in line with the production price goal and tooling budget. For example, do not design an injection-molded part with high tooling dollars if there is no tooling budget for the project.
2. Design for Manufacturability
Select a supplier that can design and manufacture your product—both of which HUI can do. By doing so your industrial designers can work closely with the supplier’s design and manufacturing engineers to develop concepts that are both manufacturable and within budget. In addition, this familiarizes the designer with the manufacturing processes and design constraints, it keeps the cost on-target and eliminates expensive surprises during later development stages.
3. Price Checks are Important During Each Development Stage
Build price checks into your project plan at each stage: concept, engineering, prototyping, pilot and production. This will help your project stay on budget and enable you to see when and where the costs are creeping out of budget. Including price checks to the agenda for design review meetings allows the team to make educated decisions based on features and functions as well as scope shift and cost.
4. Use Your Approved Supply Chain
Suppliers are a great source for design guidance, and they are willing to help design components that are easier for them to manufacture and more cost effective for you. By getting to know a supplier’s capabilities intimately and gathering their input as early as possible will help keep product costs on target.
5. Use Standard, Off-the-Shelf Components When Available
Enough said. Don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to!
For more information on HUI’s Design and Development Process, please contact Nick Rolf at 920.286.2217
