Common Product Development Problems: We Struggle with Timelines

Do you struggle to meet timelines? Do you get frustrated when you have to send what you would consider incomplete data to a toolmaker/manufacturer? Is the process of creating CAD data the bottleneck in your product development process? Many of our clients come to us because they’ve struggled with those problems with their internal design and engineering departments or because their existing design/engineering vendor didn’t deliver.

When we asked them what wasn’t being delivered, the typical response is something along the lines of “detail.” Sure, the data was delivered on time, but the “T’s” weren’t crossed and the “I’s” weren’t dotted. Some of the fine detail of the product was left to the tooling vendor to finish up. We recently released a design for tooling for a new client, and we had a follow-up conversation to discuss the design, our working together, and whether he was satisfied with the work we did. He told us, “I was very impressed that the timing and quality of work was at a higher level of detail than we are accustomed to.” Hearing that he was impressed with our timing didn’t surprise us because we hear that from most of our new clients.

What surprised us was his comment about quality. We’d never heard that before and were confused about what that meant—How can a design be “high quality”? When we asked him, he said that they’d never released data that had that level of detail included—and this was a division of a Fortune 500 company that develops a very large number of consumer products. We were pleased we could offer such an exceptional level of detail, and we walked away with a positive work experience.

Impulse Product Development is a team of experienced product development professionals based in Indianapolis, Indiana. If you struggle with timing issues and would like to release highly detailed data to your tooling and manufacturing sources, contact us today.