Amberhill Associates are passionate about New Product Development. We have over 20 years experience developing new products. Our key strengths in new product development Project management will ensure that your key product is delivered on cost, on time every time.
New Product Development (or NPD) is critical to the success of most businesses, particularly those in the hi-technology and consumer electronics industry with their short product lifecycles and rapid turnover of new models. The mobile phone industry is a perfect example where new models have a lifecycle of less than 6 months.
A typical New Product Development process takes the form shown below based on the ISO9001 process. Key stages are:-
•Ideas Generation (or identifying Customer Needs)
• Design.
• Engineering development samples
• Testing & Verification
•Prototyping
•Volume production.
The time taken to develop new products from initial concept to volume production is known as ‘Time to Market‘ and is absolutely critical to commercial success when developing new products for market.
With over 20 years experience of New Product Development in the consumer electronics industry we can support you at every stage of the NPD process:-
1) At the ‘fuzzy front end’ of the process we can help you identify New Product Development Opportunities by guiding your ideas Generation process using such techniques as ‘Brainstorming’ and ‘SWOT Analysis’ (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats’ )
2) We can help you with the ideas screening process by looking at your SAM (serviceable & Accessible Markets) and identifying your PSAM ( Profitable SAM) by analyzing Industry sales and trends, Competitor Analysis and Pricing models.
3) We will also assess the technical feasibility of your product and its manufacturability capability.
4) We will generate a Business Plan which incorporates all of this information and will allow you to model changes in product price, manufacturing cost, product volume etc. This will enable you to predict Gross Margin % and ROI (Return on Investment).
5) We will help you access Government funding for Research & Development. Depending on the size of your business, your location, the scope of your project and other factors a whole range of Government funding is available from several thousand to half a million pounds. As a client of projectsguru.co.uk we will guide you through the application process and help you to access valuable Government funds which are waiting for your application and which will help you bring your New Product Development to market.
6) We will guide your product through the Design process and minimize risk by using techniques such as DFMEA (Design Failure Modes Effects Analysis) and Risk Matrix Techniques. It is essential at this stage to Design for Manufacture and to minimize product cost. Any cost savings made at this critical stage will be locked in for the product lifecycle.
7) We will take your New Product through the development stage. This involves manufacturing a representative sample of products which will be used to test the feasibility of the product. These Development samples will incorporate all the key features of the final product and will be used as early marketing samples and to assess the manufacturability of the product. We will also assess any IPR issues at this stage.
8) One of our key strengths is our knowledge of manufacturing as well as our business knowledge. This is critical at the prototyping stage. In our view it is essential to identify the final manufacturing house before the prototyping stage so that the prototype samples are as representative of the finished product as possible. This will probably be an outsource supplier and our in-depth knowledge of this field will enable us to identify a supplier who is cost effective, accessible and quality conscious. We will manage the prototype build often supervising on site. These prototype samples will be used for customer samples, at trade shows and for Qualification trials.
9) With all the previous stages carefully managed the final volume ramp stage should be relatively straightforward. Our key strengths in project management and New Product Development will ensure that your key product is delivered on cost, on time every time.
Product Roadmaps
We also help companies develop their product roadmaps. This process is very important to new product development. To coin an old phrase “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”. A product roadmap (or routemap) is essential so that a company knows what technology, resources, capital expenditure, production capability etc is required in order to bring future products to market.
Of course part of the roadmapping process is identifying which new products to develop. We can also help with this – identifying market trends, surveying customers, and seeing what the competition is doing is all part of the process. Once the desired products are identified the roadmap is developed by identifying the technology required for the new products to be developed effectively. The additional resources are also identified along with any Capital Expenditure and additional Production capability. Once the Product Roadmap is complete it should clearly illustrate where the company is going, in terms of New Product Development, and the technology and resources which will be required to bring these developments to market.
This process is incredibly powerful in clearly defining a companies New Product Development strategy.