Country of Origin Marking: “Designed In” isn’t “Made In”.
Folks, It’s become sort of voguish to mark consumer product packaging with descriptions such as “Proudly Designed in Silicon Valley” and “Thoughtfully Assembled in the USA”. While the written words may be (technically) true, they’re no substitute for properly listing the Country of Origin (“COO”) on the product and/or package. Mess up on this and […]
New Product Industrialization and the Zone of Proximal Development
Folks, My wife is a special education teacher for primary school kids, and her job is extraordinarily more difficult than anything you or I do. We were recently at one of her work social events and I overheard something about The Zone of Proximal Development. I learned that this is Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning […]
Methods & Materials: The Foundation of New Product Development
Folks, When I was a young engineer, my first position was in the printed circuit board industry. [And thank you to the Emello family for giving me my start! Back then, I didn’t appreciate the enduring value of having to do every job in the plant. IThat job gave me an “Industrial PhD” that continues […]
Color So Hard: The Dos and Don’ts of Color Matching!
Folks, John Doe, member of the ground breaking punk band X, released a superb solo album in 1995, “Kissing So Hard”. By that time, Mr. Doe had evolved into a country-punk artist and the sixth track “Kissing (So Hard)” proved that he was as much poet as musician. What does all this got to do […]
Applying the Brakes to Early Stage Companies & Designs
Folks, We were recently approached by an early stage medical device company. Without revealing any product details, they’ve designed a specialized bandage that’s used to control traumatic bleeding. The company is led by two physicians and a finance professional. The founders have hacked several bandages and asked for our assistance in making product models to […]
How NPI Changed in 2021
Folks, It was quite a year… Again. Twelve months ago, we were all looking forward to a return to some form of normalcy. At the start of the new year, normalcy appears to be whatever we’re all doing to keep pushing forward. Several trends in new product sourcing and manufacturing emerged or were reinforced last […]
Does This Look Easy to You?
Folks, Eighty-two week lead times for some discrete components, raw material shortages and cost increases, domestic ground freight charges that have doubled in the last six months, a late winter storm in Texas that shutdown the chemical feed stock & polymer industries and “Help Wanted” signs everywhere. We’ve been at this a long time and […]
Three Important New Product Industrialization Guardrails
Folks, Back in the Precambrian era, I was a young engineer working for GE Plastics’ Electromaterials division. Communication has come a long way since then. We sent Telexes and faxes, early versions of email were emerging, our version of Instagram was a projector slide show at Thanksgiving and we met in person all the time. […]
The Design-Reality Disequilibrium
Folks, This month’s newsletter focuses on the importance of defining your entire supply chain when designing and launching a new product. If you want to get off on the right foot and succeed at scaling to volume, it’s critically important to pin down all of the “CTF” (critical to function) components, materials and parts before […]
Different Isn’t Necessarily Better
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain Folks, We see many new product concepts every month. For the past nine months, they’ve been coming in a torrent. This happened before… Following the financial crisis of 2008, new businesses and […]