A new product development process typically entails how a product will be developed from concept all the way to production.
Following such a process helps to keep a project on time and on budget, as well as provides you with control and transparency over it as you will know where you’re right now and how close you are to each milestone.
At Agilian we often work on electro-mechanical products, so in this post, we’ll be focusing on the design and development lifecycle process for electronics that we follow specifically. Although it is probably fairly similar for many product types and companies, be aware that other manufacturers may do things differently.
What does a typical NPD Process look like?
The new product development process starts with your product specifications and plan. As you move along the process the number of pieces made (first as prototypes and then as actual finished products) increases as time passes and you go through the different stages.
The product development lifecycle process can be split into several stages. We’ll examine each one as follows:
1. Plan / Specifications / Proof of Concept / Feasibility Study
The first stage is typically called a plan or sometimes called the ‘proof of concept.’ This is where you are trying to understand if the product idea is actually realistic and whether it’s feasible to design and build it. During this stage, we’ll typically look into the product’s industrial design, like renderings and physical mock-ups with the aim of evaluating all of its functions.
We’ll have a general meeting where every expert related to the product (engineering, quality, reliability, etc) is present and gives input into whether or not it’s feasible for this idea to become a product.
If the product idea passes the feasibility study, the next step is to create rapid prototype mock-ups, perhaps through 3D printing, CNC machining, but also from wood or clay, too. This allows you to physically have an idea of what the overall design of the product idea will be like in three dimensions. A real-life example is prototype mobile phones which look like the real phone but don’t work and are, in fact, just painted plastic shells. This allows the engineers and other team members to physically visualize the product.
After this stage, we move on to design evaluation…
2. Dev 1, Dev 2, EVT (we also call it “Prototyping”)
We evaluate the product design and its functionality by creating different prototypes.
Dev1 is the first initial prototype made to bring the concept to life with real parts. At this point, we don’t even know for sure that it will work, but we need to find out if all of the parts we’ve sourced will go together into the product and, in the case of electronics, it won’t use a PCB and will only have wires plugged into components probably.
Dev 2 takes the Dev 1 prototype and advances the concept, especially the addition of a rough PCB. Whereas in Dev 1 we didn’t have a PCB at all and it was just wire boarding and individual components roughly put together, in dev 2 we try to manage the components on the board and will assign how it needs to be assembled so the big picture of manufacturing the product starts to take shape. We want the product to work at this point.
Now, finally in this stage, when we go to EVT (Engineering Validation and Testing) we basically make the Dev 2 prototype even better and now we have a final prototype that looks similar to and works like the product to be mass-produced. As well as prototypes, though, at this stage, we’ll also have a complete BOM, understand the customer’s requirements, as well as have a grasp of what the initial software will look like.
As you can imagine, there have been several builds in the Dev 1, 2, and EVT stage, and here the focus is on driving forward engineering design work and DFM (design for manufacturing) ideas in successive builds, ultimately getting to a prototype that we’re happy with. These aren’t final golden samples, though, as they’re often made with soft tooling which is cheaper and faster to put together and allows a fairly faithful example but not a look-alike version of the product to be made that we can use for user interface testing to make sure it works and looks as expected.
The EVT prototypes even allow us to do initial reliability testing on some of the components, especially CTQ components like, say, a display, to see what it takes for them to fail. In this case, the display has to be a certain type to meet the customer’s quality, reliability, and physical needs and work alike prototype can be considered near to the final product’s functionality without correct CTQ components like this. Hardware validation can also happen at the EVT stage (not Dev 1 and Dev 2) and software and hardware integration and testing, and then initial compliance screening for FCC, UL, CE, etc, just to see if the product passes can also happen now (which means you know you have fewer compliance risks moving into the next stage).
In final production, hard tooling will be used, but it’s time-consuming and costly to fabricate, so the EVT stage focuses on getting a prototype made that’s as close to the final product as possible without necessarily using production tooling and processes.
3. DVT (we also call it “Tooling”)
Now we’re passed the EVT stage we move into DVT (Design Validation and Testing) where we confirm what you initially had in mind in terms of design. Like EVT, the DVT stage will be split into different builds (DVT 1, 2, etc). So in DVT 1 a few samples will be made with whatever design changes are necessary, then any issues will be fixed and updated in the subsequent DVT 2 build, and so on. Each build is a milestone that shows where you are in the new product development process and, for more complex products, there could be 4 or 5 DVT builds as many design iterations are required.
Usually, the final DVT build is the prototype that is basically perfect and as close to production as possible. At this point, the product design is frozen as we’re happy with the design, aesthetics, and functionality and there’ll be a final design review with the different teams working on the product.
During the DVT stage is the time to get hard tooling ordered and fabricated, too. The large investment into tooling is safer at this point as we know that the product design probably isn’t going to change (altering existing hard tooling is very hard, costly, and time-consuming). Soft tooling used in EVT allows us to understand how the product will look and work by making a few samples, but it isn’t suitable for production (molds made from silicone, for example, degrade quickly).
DVT 1, 2, etc will typically be made with the hard ‘production’ tooling allowing us to validate the hardware and its reliability, too, as we need to know that the tooling is going to be effective once mass production starts.
In addition, during the DVT stage, we’ll also validate the user interface, software, final industrial design, and packaging. If not already performed during EVT, we can also put the product through relevant certifications, reliability (life tests), and compliance tests, although these are also sometimes done during PVT.
Material review board (MRB)
At this point, a material review board is probably preparing for production, so at the end of the DVT stage, they’ll aim to confirm all the components, jigs, fixtures, and everything that production needs to be ready from a mechanical and electrical engineering point of view. They’ll also check whether all the suppliers are ready to provide the agreed components so if there’s suddenly a component that needs a second source or can’t be produced due to some quality issues etc the MRB will meet and discuss what to do. For example, replace it by finding a supplier of an alternate option.
The MRB is very important because they see any issues that crop up in manufacturing, especially as we start using real production processes to be used in mass production, and bring them to the attention of the design team. Their feedback may influence the design team to make adjustments to the product or components in order for it to be manufactured in a way that makes more sense.
4. PVT (Pre-production)
PVT (Product Validation and Testing) is the final design validation and verification test when we’re hoping that your product is ready for production. The production team works with the design and development teams to set up the high volume production required for mass-producing products.
Usually, large manufacturing sites like EMS suppliers have one production line dedicated to NPI (New Product Introduction) and initially do a pilot run of maybe 500 to 2,000 units maximum on it to test the manufacturing line and assembly process. This includes picking and placing machines and testing components from different suppliers (you may buy one component from more than one as a redundancy) so everything that will be used in mass production is tested first. Smaller manufacturers can also benefit from this approach, too, though.
Before the pilot run happens you have no idea how what’s going to happen on the production line. It’s possible that different issues might occur such as components not working well, failing, the design of some of the components turning out not to be manufacturable, assembly of some of the components proving to be very difficult, costly, and/or time-consuming, or being unreliable. In these cases, the manufacturing engineer finds that the product can’t be manufactured in the way that the design engineer has specified and orders another PVT round once the issues have been fixed. If so, different rounds of PVT will be required and we’ll have PVT 1, PVT 2, etc.
At the end of PVT hopefully, all the corrective actions and critical and major issues have been resolved, tooling and design are finalized, and manufacturing is ready for mass production.
5. Mass production
At the mass production stage design is frozen and we’re typically running large batches of the product you know product through the line/s. For example, PCBs will be anywhere between 5,000 to 50,000 units initially over the first couple of weeks, ramping up to around 100,000 at the end of the month.
A certain kind of schedule will have been devised showing what needs to be done and how many lines must run to achieve the 100,000 units on time and the yields are calculated.
First pass yield is the percentage of the first products that come off of the line and pass. The remainder that didn’t pass go through troubleshooting and the rework team figure out how to fix them quickly and why they didn’t pass in the first place. For example, if a machine missed a certain component they find out why and how the error occurred, fix it, and re-run the machine until they’re sure that it’s working correctly now. Making fixes like this means that the production team reach their goal of improving the Second pass yield. In fact, the Second pass yield would ideally be in the high 90% for you to know you’re in great shape for mass production. To get to that high of a yield rate percentage it’s probably necessary to spend a little more time and money on rework at first, but it’s a good investment because it means that you won’t have large numbers of defective products when mass production is in full flow.
As with the other stages of the new product development process, mass production is ramped up to give the production team time to find and fix issues without them causing a huge impact. So that might be cautiously going from 5,00 units to 10,000, then doubling it, and so on until you’ve reached the 100,000 unit target. If issues are found and changes need to be made at this stage, a review board of key team members may come together to discuss them and put in place corrective actions. The point is to catch issues before we’re turning out very large numbers of products in order to minimize the number of defective products.
What happens after mass production?
After production, you need to get the products out of China to yourself or your customers. That means there are still logistics and shipping to handle. Incoterms etc will be agreed upon in advance with your manufacturer, but this is a separate part of the process from the typical design and development life cycle process we’ve been through earlier.
Why do importers need to understand the NPD lifecycle?
Let’s suppose that you are a buyer and you have a great product idea but that’s about it.
Understanding this product lifestyle is not only important and beneficial to you, but also for everyone that is involved in that development process because it’s a plan and each one of the stages discussed has a schedule that helps keep the entire project on track and on time with the milestones such as reaching DVT 1, PVT, etc. For example, in the actual calendar schedule it might say that proof of concept is going to take about a month, Dev 1 then one is going to be about a month and a half, Dev 2 is going to be two months, EVT will be another two months later, and so on.
If a milestone is arrived at late it will increase your lead time as everything is held up, so you the buyer keep tabs on progress and will know when to put pressure on the supplier to make faster progress or explain how and why things have gotten delayed. In doing so, you have more control and transparency over your own project rather than leaving everything to the supplier and taking their word for it.
Conclusion
A product development life cycle process like this is not the same for every company or product type, however, in general for consumer electronics at least, this would be a good one to follow and provides a good guideline for importers and junior engineers alike.
If you do decide to work with us here at Agilian to develop and manufacture your new product, this will help you understand how we will design your product, too, as we’ll be following this kind of new product development process.
