The Design and Engineering Process In a Nutshell<\/h2> ![\"Hexa](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Hexa-Copter-Prototype.jpg\")
<\/figure> Designing and engineering, as they pertain to product development, can be thought of as two separate processes<\/a> of equal importance. Both can be handled by the same team or person and are essentially intertwined.<\/p> Designing a Product<\/h3>
Product design can be considered a far more artistic aspect of product development than engineering. The design process concerns itself with the aesthetic qualities desired, functionality required, and regulations to be met. In short, it can be described as follows:<\/p>
Identifying a Problem<\/strong><\/h4> This pivotal first step in product design is largely handled\nby the company as opposed to the hired designer. Market research and surveying\ncan likely provide you with all of the information you may need to handle this\nstep on your own.<\/p>
Solving the Problem<\/strong><\/h4> It is here that designers typically come into the picture.\nFrom your key ideas, designers visually develop a product capable of solving\nthe problem you’ve identified.<\/p>
Refining the Solution<\/strong><\/h4> This is the iterative phase of every product’s ongoing\ndevelopment. In effect, this stage of the product’s design may never truly come\nto a close. Over time, tweaks and improvements are almost entirely inevitable\nand the product you begin producing may not look anything like its refined\ncounterpart from the future.<\/p>
Product Engineering<\/h4>
This part of the product development process deals with the\ncreation of a production system for the item in question. Product engineers may\nnot necessarily concern themselves with details such as an item’s utility or\nappearance, but instead concentrate the bulk of their efforts on creating a\nsafe, reliable specification for crafting your product.<\/p>
Why Manufacturing Costs\nMatter<\/h2> ![\"Reducing](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Reducing-Production-Costs-min.jpg\")
<\/figure> Manufacturing costs<\/a> matter for the very same reasons all\nother operational costs of a particular business matter; they affect a\ncompany’s bottom line.<\/p> Market Costs Can Pile Up Quickly<\/h3>
Costs can quickly gain momentum if you aren’t keeping up\nwith them and, before you know it, they could pile precariously high,\nthreatening to match or exceed your profits. Here’s a quick rundown on the\ncosts involved with creating products to sell.<\/p>
- The ‘cost of goods sold<\/a>‘ is comprised of only the direct costs of production, including materials and labor. These costs are often rather straightforward to quantify.<\/li><\/ul>
- Distribution costs are all expenses that arise from logistics. These include the price of delivery from the factory to your warehouse or fulfillment center and subsequent shipping to customers as well as retailers.<\/li><\/ul>
Sales<\/g> team and advertising costs are those incurred for all forms of marketing and the labor involved in managing marketing campaigns, etc.<\/li><\/ul> The Bottom Line<\/h3>
Turning a profit with your new product generally comes down\nto a simple formula:<\/p>
- Sales Price – Total Expenses = Profit<\/li><\/ul>
Your business’s total expenses are likely to be primarily comprised of your product creation expenses. To improve the profitability of any product, you’ll need to better manage the necessary costs involved in producing it. <\/p>
Reducing manufacturing costs on new product design and prototype design services<\/a> can be done in many different ways. Below are a few solid tips for tackling this issue during the design and engineering stages of your product’s development:<\/p> Design Tips for\nReducing Manufacturing Costs<\/h2> ![\"Engine](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Engine-Bracket-Prototype-1024x674.jpg\")
<\/figure> The design process provides plenty of wiggle room for production price considerations. In fact, this process often determines over 50% of your product’s final manufacturing price. In contrast, the cost of a quality product design is negligible, estimated at a mere 5% of total expenses in the production process.<\/p>
Due to the reasons stated above, maximizing product profitability is best done at this stage of development, before engineering tasks are tackled at all. Here are a few cost-management tips for minimizing the costs of manufacturing services<\/a> as your product takes shape:<\/p> 1. Design for Manufacturing<\/strong><\/p> Designing for manufacturing is a specialized approach<\/a> to designing that prioritizes ease of product creation over other factors. However, despite centering on the ease with which an item can be manufactured, this technique is particularly helpful for minimizing costs across the board. After all, manufacturing costs are mostly contingent on the relative difficulty of crafting your product.<\/p> This approach changes depending on the product and\nmanufacturing processes you apply it to, but physical products share similar\nrequirements. To begin effectively designing a physical product for\nmanufacturing, you’ll need to take the key points that follow into\nconsideration:<\/p>
Minimize Set-Up (Fixturing or Tooling)<\/strong><\/p> ![\"Reducing](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Reducing-Manufacturing-Costs-Tooling-and-Fixtures-min.jpg\")
<\/figure> Set-up or fixturing is the process of physically flipping a\npart during the building process. This applies largely to CNC machining and can\nbe the cause of significant price discrepancies due to relatively small design\nflaws.<\/p>
To optimize this part of the production process, you should focus on developing a product design that can be built with minimal flipping and re-orientation during machining.<\/p>
Use the Ideal Form of Your Chosen Material <\/strong><\/p> The many types of plastics, metals, and other materials you have to choose from present diverse challenges and benefits in the production process, but an often overlooked aspect of choosing materials is the form they come in.<\/p>
Once an appropriate metal has been chosen, for instance, differentiating between its bar, sheet, and plate forms can help to drastically cut costs, as certain forms are often cheaper than others.<\/p>
Use Proper Part Tolerances<\/strong><\/p> A manufactured part’s tolerance is the degree to which its exact dimensions can vary without it becoming unusable. Small differences in size creep into most manufactured products, but big differences are usually inexcusable. <\/p>
Specifying a high degree of precision as necessary for each of your product’s parts may seem ideal, but this is a surefire way to blow up the price. Instead, aim for a functional blend of high precision parts with low tolerance and low precision parts with high tolerance.<\/p>
- High precision pieces are usually those that require further assembly
or attachment<\/g> to each other.<\/li><\/ul> - Low precision pieces tend to be outer coverings and standalone parts
that require<\/g> no precise connections to other parts.<\/li><\/ul> 2. Consider the Materials<\/strong><\/p> Material options are vastly varied in modern manufacturing, and each has a host of characteristics worth keeping in mind as your product is designed. There’s much more to materials than available form factors. Here are a few key points to keep in mind:<\/p>
Consider Material Finishes<\/strong><\/p> ![\"Reducing](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Reducing-Manufacturing-Costs-Finishing-Materials-min.jpg\")
<\/figure> Accounting for different pricing for certain material finishes helps to gauge the overall cost of your product’s manufacturing process.<\/p>
Injection molds, for example, can be polished to varying degrees, each more expensive than the last. This defines the upfront price for mold tooling but will not apply to individual parts once production begins. <\/p>
Choosing less refined finishes ensures lower tooling prices<\/a> and might not negatively affect your finished product’s appearance. The effect is far more pronounced if your product is to be produced through the use of CNC machining as individual parts will require finishing.<\/p> Minimize Manufacturing Waste<\/strong><\/p> Waste of any kind in the manufacturing process is costly. Lean manufacturing as a concept centers on the elimination of such wasteful aspects of production as defective products, scrap material, and<\/g> industrial byproducts.<\/p> A simple rule of ten<\/g><\/a> suggests that problems compound by ten as they progress through each stage of a product’s development, from design to delivery. Issues with waste can be handled before your product leaves the design phase of its development, helping to cut costs down the line.<\/p> - Defective products can be caused by failings on the manufacturer’s side of the equation, but design plays a significant role as well. Your best bet to avoid this while still in the design phase is active collaboration with a manufacturing engineer to ensure specific details that increase the likelihood of defective products being created are handled early on<\/a>.<\/li><\/ul>
- Scrap material is any material leftover after a product or group of
products have<\/g> successfully been built. Tackling this issue during the design stage of<\/g> your product’s development often comes to setting higher tolerances for parts<\/g> that are neither functionally nor aesthetically critical. As was mentioned<\/g> above, high tolerance and low precision make for cheaper production<\/g>. They also make for less scrap material being removed to account<\/g> for especially specific sizing, etc.<\/li><\/ul> Another scrap reduction option is to include as many individual parts per piece of material as is safely possible. In injection molding<\/a>, this means creating molds capable of producing the maximum number of parts in a single shot.<\/p> 3. Consider Hollow Structural Options<\/strong><\/p> In injection molded products and parts, the thicker the wall\nof the part, the higher the chance of problems arising during production. All\nmanner of defects can creep into thick walls in this type of production\nprocess, severely affecting production costs by making the overall process more\ncomplex.<\/p>
Clever design techniques minimize these kinds of risks by\nadopting the use of structural elements such as ribs and gussets, which provide\nsignificant strength improvements in thin-walled parts without the difficulties\nassociated with thicker walls.<\/p>
Apart from minimizing defects in production, using hollow\nstructures for a product wherever possible allows for less material overall to\nbe used to produce each part. Less material makes for lower expenses. If your\nparts are being injection molded, then less material also equals less cooling\ntime per piece, which compounds the potential for savings.<\/p>
4. Keep Physical Prototyping to a Minimum<\/strong><\/p> ![\"Reducing](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Reducing-Manufacturing-Costs-Simulation-min-1024x581.jpg\")
<\/figure> Physical prototypes are an essential part of any product’s development process, but relying on them too heavily can cost you quite a lot of money. <\/p>
Through the use of iterative CAD development, you can work out a lot of the kinks in your product before you need a physical prototype at all. Software-aided performance tests<\/a> reinforce this possibility with highly accurate specialized options available to separate industries for stress testing parts and materials.<\/p> Engineering Tips for Reducing Manufacturing Costs<\/strong><\/h2> The engineering process poses much potential for product cost reduction. Skilled engineers consider numerous factors as they create a suitable production process or system.<\/p>
Cost-reduction engineering, as its name implies, deals\nentirely with the optimization of pricing in the manufacturing process. There\nare many approaches to this task and techniques to take into account. Here are\na couple of helpful options:<\/p>
5. Consider Value Engineering<\/strong><\/p> Value engineering centers on the refinement of a product’s implicit functions in relation to its overall manufacturing cost. Functional yet cost-effective products are always the end goal in this process. <\/p>
However, engineering services<\/a> take into account each of a product’s functions throughout the process of its design and discards those that add insufficient consumer value. It’s a scientific process of sorts that asks what something does and whether that something is needed at all.<\/p> An example of the above would be the omission of a\nrubberized grip on a writing pen to keep costs and complexity to a minimum,\nwhile only sacrificing a small improvement in utility.<\/p>
6. Use Off-the-Shelf Components<\/strong><\/p> Off-the-shelf components in manufacturing are product pieces<\/a> that can simply be purchased instead of being crafted entirely from scratch. Incorporating the use of off-the-shelf components into a product’s design can help keep costs down in a variety of ways. Due to the amount of time you eliminate from the crafting process by omitting ready-made pieces, the manufacturing price of your product can drop significantly.<\/p> Another cost-related reason for considering the use of off-the-shelf parts for your product is the inherent flexibility they allow for in the development process. Adjusting ready-made pieces to fit a specific form factor is often an easy undertaking. Adapting custom-made pieces to an evolving design can leave you with loads of incompatible parts that will need to be discarded \u2013 a pretty costly mistake to make.<\/p>
Additional Tips<\/strong><\/h2> ![\"Medical](\"https:\/\/cdn.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Medical-Equipment-Design-Prototype.jpg\")
<\/figure> There are a few more ways for you to cut manufacturing costs\nfor your new product or prototype that are worth considering in addition to the\nothers mentioned above.<\/p>
7. Choose the Right Manufacturer<\/strong><\/p> Merely choosing a manufacturer that works best for your\nbusiness can help tremendously in keeping costs low. Getting samples beforehand\ncan assist in selecting the right factory for production.<\/p>
Samples may be a bit costly to acquire from certain factories, but they can help you to decide if the production quality they offer is what you’re looking for before going all-in on a full-sized lot of items.<\/p>
8. Determine Your Minimum Viable Product<\/strong><\/p> The minimum viable product is a version of your product with\nthe bare necessities needed to get and hold the attention of early consumers.\nViewing your product’s design through the lens of a minimum viable product\nensures you are not overextending in upfront costs without sure footing in the\nform of customer expectations.<\/p>
9. Create a Better Bill of Materials<\/strong><\/p> A bill of materials is essentially a list of everything needed to create your product and the steps taken in the creation process. This document is necessary for serious production purposes and facilitates all stages of development from design to assembly. Improving your bill of materials is likely to come down to encouraging greater collaboration between designers, engineers, and manufacturers.<\/p>
A poorly designed bill of materials makes for numerous costly mistakes in material sourcing and manufacturing. With all relevant parties actively communicating about and improving the accuracy of the bill of materials, you can avoid the costs well ahead of time.<\/p>
Cad Crowd Has Freelance Prototype Design Professionals<\/h2>
At Cad Crowd, pre-vetted CAD professionals from around the world can help you with product design services<\/a> for cost-effective production. All work is handled confidentially between you and your chosen designer. Get in touch<\/a> to get a free quote on your project.<\/p>
<\/figure> Designing and engineering, as they pertain to product development, can be thought of as two separate processes<\/a> of equal importance. Both can be handled by the same team or person and are essentially intertwined.<\/p> Product design can be considered a far more artistic aspect of product development than engineering. The design process concerns itself with the aesthetic qualities desired, functionality required, and regulations to be met. In short, it can be described as follows:<\/p> This pivotal first step in product design is largely handled\nby the company as opposed to the hired designer. Market research and surveying\ncan likely provide you with all of the information you may need to handle this\nstep on your own.<\/p> It is here that designers typically come into the picture.\nFrom your key ideas, designers visually develop a product capable of solving\nthe problem you’ve identified.<\/p> This is the iterative phase of every product’s ongoing\ndevelopment. In effect, this stage of the product’s design may never truly come\nto a close. Over time, tweaks and improvements are almost entirely inevitable\nand the product you begin producing may not look anything like its refined\ncounterpart from the future.<\/p> This part of the product development process deals with the\ncreation of a production system for the item in question. Product engineers may\nnot necessarily concern themselves with details such as an item’s utility or\nappearance, but instead concentrate the bulk of their efforts on creating a\nsafe, reliable specification for crafting your product.<\/p> Manufacturing costs<\/a> matter for the very same reasons all\nother operational costs of a particular business matter; they affect a\ncompany’s bottom line.<\/p> Costs can quickly gain momentum if you aren’t keeping up\nwith them and, before you know it, they could pile precariously high,\nthreatening to match or exceed your profits. Here’s a quick rundown on the\ncosts involved with creating products to sell.<\/p> Turning a profit with your new product generally comes down\nto a simple formula:<\/p> Your business’s total expenses are likely to be primarily comprised of your product creation expenses. To improve the profitability of any product, you’ll need to better manage the necessary costs involved in producing it. <\/p> Reducing manufacturing costs on new product design and prototype design services<\/a> can be done in many different ways. Below are a few solid tips for tackling this issue during the design and engineering stages of your product’s development:<\/p> The design process provides plenty of wiggle room for production price considerations. In fact, this process often determines over 50% of your product’s final manufacturing price. In contrast, the cost of a quality product design is negligible, estimated at a mere 5% of total expenses in the production process.<\/p> Due to the reasons stated above, maximizing product profitability is best done at this stage of development, before engineering tasks are tackled at all. Here are a few cost-management tips for minimizing the costs of manufacturing services<\/a> as your product takes shape:<\/p> 1. Design for Manufacturing<\/strong><\/p> Designing for manufacturing is a specialized approach<\/a> to designing that prioritizes ease of product creation over other factors. However, despite centering on the ease with which an item can be manufactured, this technique is particularly helpful for minimizing costs across the board. After all, manufacturing costs are mostly contingent on the relative difficulty of crafting your product.<\/p> This approach changes depending on the product and\nmanufacturing processes you apply it to, but physical products share similar\nrequirements. To begin effectively designing a physical product for\nmanufacturing, you’ll need to take the key points that follow into\nconsideration:<\/p> Minimize Set-Up (Fixturing or Tooling)<\/strong><\/p> Set-up or fixturing is the process of physically flipping a\npart during the building process. This applies largely to CNC machining and can\nbe the cause of significant price discrepancies due to relatively small design\nflaws.<\/p> To optimize this part of the production process, you should focus on developing a product design that can be built with minimal flipping and re-orientation during machining.<\/p> Use the Ideal Form of Your Chosen Material <\/strong><\/p> The many types of plastics, metals, and other materials you have to choose from present diverse challenges and benefits in the production process, but an often overlooked aspect of choosing materials is the form they come in.<\/p> Once an appropriate metal has been chosen, for instance, differentiating between its bar, sheet, and plate forms can help to drastically cut costs, as certain forms are often cheaper than others.<\/p> Use Proper Part Tolerances<\/strong><\/p> A manufactured part’s tolerance is the degree to which its exact dimensions can vary without it becoming unusable. Small differences in size creep into most manufactured products, but big differences are usually inexcusable. <\/p> Specifying a high degree of precision as necessary for each of your product’s parts may seem ideal, but this is a surefire way to blow up the price. Instead, aim for a functional blend of high precision parts with low tolerance and low precision parts with high tolerance.<\/p> 2. Consider the Materials<\/strong><\/p> Material options are vastly varied in modern manufacturing, and each has a host of characteristics worth keeping in mind as your product is designed. There’s much more to materials than available form factors. Here are a few key points to keep in mind:<\/p> Consider Material Finishes<\/strong><\/p> Accounting for different pricing for certain material finishes helps to gauge the overall cost of your product’s manufacturing process.<\/p> Injection molds, for example, can be polished to varying degrees, each more expensive than the last. This defines the upfront price for mold tooling but will not apply to individual parts once production begins. <\/p> Choosing less refined finishes ensures lower tooling prices<\/a> and might not negatively affect your finished product’s appearance. The effect is far more pronounced if your product is to be produced through the use of CNC machining as individual parts will require finishing.<\/p> Minimize Manufacturing Waste<\/strong><\/p> Waste of any kind in the manufacturing process is costly. Lean manufacturing as a concept centers on the elimination of such wasteful aspects of production as defective products, scrap material, A simple rule Another scrap reduction option is to include as many individual parts per piece of material as is safely possible. In injection molding<\/a>, this means creating molds capable of producing the maximum number of parts in a single shot.<\/p> 3. Consider Hollow Structural Options<\/strong><\/p> In injection molded products and parts, the thicker the wall\nof the part, the higher the chance of problems arising during production. All\nmanner of defects can creep into thick walls in this type of production\nprocess, severely affecting production costs by making the overall process more\ncomplex.<\/p> Clever design techniques minimize these kinds of risks by\nadopting the use of structural elements such as ribs and gussets, which provide\nsignificant strength improvements in thin-walled parts without the difficulties\nassociated with thicker walls.<\/p> Apart from minimizing defects in production, using hollow\nstructures for a product wherever possible allows for less material overall to\nbe used to produce each part. Less material makes for lower expenses. If your\nparts are being injection molded, then less material also equals less cooling\ntime per piece, which compounds the potential for savings.<\/p> 4. Keep Physical Prototyping to a Minimum<\/strong><\/p> Physical prototypes are an essential part of any product’s development process, but relying on them too heavily can cost you quite a lot of money. <\/p> Through the use of iterative CAD development, you can work out a lot of the kinks in your product before you need a physical prototype at all. Software-aided performance tests<\/a> reinforce this possibility with highly accurate specialized options available to separate industries for stress testing parts and materials.<\/p> The engineering process poses much potential for product cost reduction. Skilled engineers consider numerous factors as they create a suitable production process or system.<\/p> Cost-reduction engineering, as its name implies, deals\nentirely with the optimization of pricing in the manufacturing process. There\nare many approaches to this task and techniques to take into account. Here are\na couple of helpful options:<\/p> 5. Consider Value Engineering<\/strong><\/p> Value engineering centers on the refinement of a product’s implicit functions in relation to its overall manufacturing cost. Functional yet cost-effective products are always the end goal in this process. <\/p> However, engineering services<\/a> take into account each of a product’s functions throughout the process of its design and discards those that add insufficient consumer value. It’s a scientific process of sorts that asks what something does and whether that something is needed at all.<\/p> An example of the above would be the omission of a\nrubberized grip on a writing pen to keep costs and complexity to a minimum,\nwhile only sacrificing a small improvement in utility.<\/p> 6. Use Off-the-Shelf Components<\/strong><\/p> Off-the-shelf components in manufacturing are product pieces<\/a> that can simply be purchased instead of being crafted entirely from scratch. Incorporating the use of off-the-shelf components into a product’s design can help keep costs down in a variety of ways. Due to the amount of time you eliminate from the crafting process by omitting ready-made pieces, the manufacturing price of your product can drop significantly.<\/p> Another cost-related reason for considering the use of off-the-shelf parts for your product is the inherent flexibility they allow for in the development process. Adjusting ready-made pieces to fit a specific form factor is often an easy undertaking. Adapting custom-made pieces to an evolving design can leave you with loads of incompatible parts that will need to be discarded \u2013 a pretty costly mistake to make.<\/p> There are a few more ways for you to cut manufacturing costs\nfor your new product or prototype that are worth considering in addition to the\nothers mentioned above.<\/p> 7. Choose the Right Manufacturer<\/strong><\/p> Merely choosing a manufacturer that works best for your\nbusiness can help tremendously in keeping costs low. Getting samples beforehand\ncan assist in selecting the right factory for production.<\/p> Samples may be a bit costly to acquire from certain factories, but they can help you to decide if the production quality they offer is what you’re looking for before going all-in on a full-sized lot of items.<\/p> 8. Determine Your Minimum Viable Product<\/strong><\/p> The minimum viable product is a version of your product with\nthe bare necessities needed to get and hold the attention of early consumers.\nViewing your product’s design through the lens of a minimum viable product\nensures you are not overextending in upfront costs without sure footing in the\nform of customer expectations.<\/p> 9. Create a Better Bill of Materials<\/strong><\/p> A bill of materials is essentially a list of everything needed to create your product and the steps taken in the creation process. This document is necessary for serious production purposes and facilitates all stages of development from design to assembly. Improving your bill of materials is likely to come down to encouraging greater collaboration between designers, engineers, and manufacturers.<\/p> A poorly designed bill of materials makes for numerous costly mistakes in material sourcing and manufacturing. With all relevant parties actively communicating about and improving the accuracy of the bill of materials, you can avoid the costs well ahead of time.<\/p> At Cad Crowd, pre-vetted CAD professionals from around the world can help you with product design services<\/a> for cost-effective production. All work is handled confidentially between you and your chosen designer. Get in touch<\/a> to get a free quote on your project.<\/p> Designing a Product<\/h3>
Identifying a Problem<\/strong><\/h4>
Solving the Problem<\/strong><\/h4>
Refining the Solution<\/strong><\/h4>
Product Engineering<\/h4>
Why Manufacturing Costs\nMatter<\/h2>
<\/figure> Market Costs Can Pile Up Quickly<\/h3>
The Bottom Line<\/h3>
Design Tips for\nReducing Manufacturing Costs<\/h2>
<\/figure> <\/figure> <\/figure> <\/figure> Engineering Tips for Reducing Manufacturing Costs<\/strong><\/h2>
Additional Tips<\/strong><\/h2>
<\/figure> Cad Crowd Has Freelance Prototype Design Professionals<\/h2>