Consulting Engineering and Product Development for SMEs

Innovations should not end in the archive

Product deve­lo­p­ment means taking risks. Regard­less of a speci­fic request, products or services are newly crea­ted. Whether it will later be sold is uncer­tain. So we never know if deve­lo­p­ment will come up with a posi­tive result. Results are only produ­ced indi­rectly. At the same time, inno­va­tion requi­res a great deal of resour­ces. In parti­cu­lar, the scarce resource of know-how is often used over longer peri­ods of time.

Thus, deve­lo­p­ment is often hija­cked. From engi­nee­ring, who calls some­thing deve­lo­p­ment, which is without risk. From sales, who wants to have preli­mi­nary exami­na­ti­ons for a custo­mer that remain without pay. Or simply from the neces­si­ties of ever­y­day life. This is how product deve­lo­p­ment is a matter of chance.

Let´s get product development implemented for good

Profes­sio­nal product-deve­lo­p­ment means:

  1. write down a deve­lo­p­ment stra­tegy, deri­ved from the corpo­rate strategy.
  2. arrange deve­lo­p­ment work­shops and achieve results. Deve­lo­p­ment is not always, but very often a group acti­vity. It is helpful to work toge­ther on deve­lo­p­ment topics, in effi­ci­ent work­shops that make the most of the skills of the parti­ci­pants. Only have parti­ci­pants take part in these work­shops who are able to contri­bute towards the result. No rubber­necks please.
  3. Good requi­re­ments are essen­tial for good deve­lo­p­ment. Syste­mi­zing requi­re­ments manage­ment is often one of the first tasks. This prevents products from being crea­ted at random and ensu­res that those products with the grea­test poten­tial are deve­lo­ped first.

Deve­lo­p­ment times can be shor­tened after good prepa­ra­tory work through paral­lel deve­lo­p­ment with pre-selec­ted suppli­ers. Product costs will also frequently be reduced.

Better and Faster Product-Design

In many compa­nies, engi­nee­ring is a bott­len­eck. At the same time, there are constant complaints about too much bureau­cracy in engi­nee­ring. What to do? In my expe­ri­ence, there are always a series of opti­ons for action in engineering:

  1. How is the design-task descri­bed? Is there a product structure?
  2. Do those that require know the amount of work behind each requi­re­ment? Does engi­nee­ring know? Does engi­nee­ring know they know?
  3. Is stan­dar­diza­tion daily life or a future project?
  4. Is BOM-manage­ment helpful for the over­all process?
  5. Is the inter­ac­tion of sales, design and works prepa­ra­tion efficient?

Recom­men­da­ti­ons can be deri­ved from the analy­sis of the situa­tion. Concepts are worked out be about stan­dar­diza­tion, about BOM-manage­ment or about the deve­lo­p­ment of a sales-orien­ted product struc­ture, which also provi­des infor­ma­tion about the amount of work requi­red by engi­nee­ring in order processing.

Do you want to increase your efficiency in engineering and product development?

Product-Deve­lo­p­ment and Engi­nee­ring are too influ­en­tial for the long-term healthy deve­lo­p­ment of a company to become “mana­ged by chance”. It is indis­pensable to imple­ment a deve­lo­p­ment stra­tegy and a robust deve­lo­p­ment process. Capa­bi­li­ties and limi­ta­ti­ons need to be known throug­hout the company. A deve­lo­p­ment work­shop at the start is a main buil­ding block of a syste­ma­ti­zed deve­lo­p­ment process, the result of which is a custo­mer-centric product development.

Syste­ma­tize engi­nee­ring and product development
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Dr.-Ing. Carl U. Bauer | Manage­ment Consul­tant | 45527 Hattingen
Phone: +49 151 5076 9595 | Email: cube@cube-consulting.eu | Cont­act

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