After a product prototype receives investment or crowdfunding, how do the founders proceed with mass manufacturing?
In: Engineering
Typically, they will work with manufacturers overseas (for cost reasons) to determine the best way to manufacture the product. This will be a combination of sourcing off the shelf components (from other manufacturers) and producing custom components themselves (or via another manufacturer). The manufacturer will then tool the factory to make the custom components and assemble the final packaged product.
Initial batches will be made so that quality assurance can make adjustments to the manufacturing process to correct defects. At the same time, they will begin placing orders from their suppliers for the input materials (be those other components or true raw materials).
From there, it is just a matter of scaling up or down based on demand. Given the cost of all above, initial manufacturing runs are usually in the thousands or tens of thousands, which are shipped to state-side warehouses for distribution.
Once I have a working prototype in my hands (either one I’ve made or one I’ve been given from an outside developer), I go through a Manufacturing Release process to turn this bespoke device into something my company can produce in quantity.
A large portion of this process is engineering review, which sometimes catches errors in the design, but mostly involves design changes to reduce the number and complexity of parts, make the machined parts simpler, and make the assembly process faster. Any machined parts need to be defined with fabrication drawings, which not only describes the shape of the parts, but the acceptable variations (design tolerances) in the finished part. Most of this falls under the “Design for Manufacturability/DFM” concept.
Once the design is complete, we produce a bill of materials (BOM) – a list of all the things you need to make the product. We also create subassemblies – groupings of parts that a worker might assemble at one workstation and then move to another workstation – and those too get part numbers.
Every part we buy as-is gets a part number and spec sheet, along with the manufacturer, preferred vendor(s), and their part numbers. Every part we have machined gets a part number and fabrication drawing. All of this goes into our electronic inventory system, so each part number ties to an unambiguous definition of what the part is and/or how to create one. By having all this documented and signed off by engineers, our buyers have all the information they need to purchase items or order fabrication runs when an order to make the product is approved. Our inventory specialists get to time purchases carefully, managing vendors and cost and leadtimes, making sure that the assemblers get the parts they need when they need them.
While that’s going on, we produce assembly drawings and procedures, to teach people who have never seen the product before how to assemble it. We have our technical writers prepare internal and external documentation. Assembly manuals, service manuals, user manuals.
In reality, all these processes are happening at once, because we want our fabricators to give us feedback that might improve the fabricated parts, and we want our assemblers and service technicians to give us feedback that might improve their workflow, and we want our purchasing department to guide us to preferred vendors.
Once all that is done (or, more realistically, *while* all that is being done) we produce a pilot build. We order maybe 10 units, our buyer goes out and purchases enough stuff to make 10 plus some extra for waste, and our assemblers try to build to our documentation. We may find additional weaknesses here – maybe a bolt is badly located and hard to get to, or we need to add additional jigs, test procedures, etc. These issues are reviewed and changes are made as needed.
Finally, if the pilot build wasn’t a complete disaster, we signoff on the first production run. These products might still have some inconsistencies and flaws, but good quality control should prevent defective units from leaving the building. Changes from this point on are full-on design revisions, and a process of continuous improvement will go on for the life of the product.
The inventor or owner of the prototype works to get a factory or licenses the design to a company. The company may buy the design to the prototype.
The other way – the inventor may have a company make the parts, breaking the design into ‘sub-assembly’. They have put it together on their own (as some kickstarter funded ones have done) or they may hire another company to put the sub-assemblies together.
Many companies will outsource the manufacturing – other firms make the product based on the prototype and slap the designer’s logo on it. Apple is famous for that.
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