Design Reviews - Reduce costs in product development.
Effective design reviews are a critical tool in ensuring successful new product development. Too often we are asked to review designs post-launch when a problem has been identified and costly intervention is needed. In this blog, we try to articulate how this might be avoided with Independent design reviews.
Design Review - What?
Design Reviews are an independent in depth technical review by a team of technical experts and managers. Typically their goals are to ensure the risks in proceeding with the intended solutions and plan are proportional to the benefits from proceeding. Their focus is on finding problems early when cost to correct is minimised. Unfortunately some start-up and SME manufacturers struggle to implement effective designs reviews and often this can result in problems arising late in the development process or worse still during manufacture and launch when costs to fix are high.
Design Review - How?
At IDB we believe, effective design reviews are best viewed as a continuous process for improving an organisations products and knowledge. The design review process requires:
An independent team of experts able to comprehend, analyse and question the detailed technical specifications, design calculations, simulations, design documentation and design verification tests.
A facilitator to co-ordinate, encourage team debate, capture concerns and summarise outcomes in a manner that helps those involved learn and grow.
Design Inputs - starting from requirements and including all design documentation allowing a thorough and full analysis.
Checklists - help ensure all aspects of good design and best practice are included. These can be customised and form a body of knowledge that enables future teams to avoid common pitfalls.
Review Outcomes - a well documented review outcome including prioritised recommendations for executive decision making. Generally this will include a go / no go recommendation for proceeding with the next project phase.
Design Review - When?
A good first step in planning any product development project is to consider the review process and where appropriate checks and balances will reduce risk and have the most impact on project outcomes.
The reviews necessary are often related to size, complexity and criticality of the project. ln some sectors such reviews are mandatory for legal conformity.
Generally we find three independent reviews very helpful in IoT projects.
System Requirements Review - here we like to check our FEARS have been addressed. Considering Functional, Environmental, Aesthetic, Regulatory and Security aspects of the system and in particular exploring the interfaces between user, product and system provider.
Critical Design Review - may often be shortened or overlooked due to time constraints as the design outputs become available and the project emphasis switches to manufacturing readiness. However we find a thorough and independent review of the design intent, design documentation and verification results almost always identifies some gotchas that may prove costly if mot addressed.
Production Readiness Review - is often the last opportunity to catch problems before a customer has the opportunity to experience these. The focus here is on ensuring the manufacturing processes and capabilities are sufficient to consistently produce products of the required quality with minimal scrap or re-work at the target cost. Often this may be combined with review of the final customer experience from production products and include analysis of beta testing by significant customers or influences.