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How to survive the common “Valley of
Death” between
concepts and viable products:
The official page of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition
(led by the most famous high-tech leaders) is quoted as saying
“Experience indicates that even the most
promising ideas face daunting commercialization
challenges and a nearly impassable
Valley of Death between promising concept and viable product.
Neither government funding nor conventional private investment can bridge
this gap.”
Well, commercialization principles can bridge that gap. Read on::
Commercialization
Article
First published in Section 3.10 in the 2020 DFM book
Definition
Commercialization is the process that converts ideas, research,
or prototypes into viable products and production systems that retain the
desired functionality, while designing the product to be readily manufacturable
and scalable at at low cost and launched or implemented quickly with high quality designed in.
Commercialization also involves formulating effective manufacturing and supply
chain strategies early, devising and implementing
those strategies. Commercialization may be a necessary step for commercial
success for innovations coming from startup ventures, research efforts, acquired
technology, patents, and so forth.
Common Causes of Commercialization Challenges
Here are common causes that include their false assumptions and
counterproductive practices:
“Get something working fast, regardless of manufacturability and cost. They can
all be fixed later.”
“Get it working quickly with whatever parts you can find now, and built with
whatever process you have access to now.
They can easily be changed later.”
“Make sure the prototype will work now, at any cost, by specifying tight
tolerances and using highly skilled labor.”
How to Best Develop Commercialized Products by Design
The ideal way to commercialize products and production systems
would be to design them "d do it right the first time" for the optimal
manufacturability, cost, quality, time, and functionality.
The previous section
shows how to do manufacturable research. which is the start of doing product
development “right the first time”. If that is not done, then the
proof-of-principle or prototype may have to be redesigned for
commercialization. It is best to start with the proactive version by
starting with Manufacturable Research at https://www.design4manufacturability.com/research.htm
.
Identify and preserve the “crown jewels”
The "crown jewels" are the essence of the innovation or what customers are
buying the product for. The first step in the commercialization process is to identify
the crown jewels to preserve them.
The science would be the
same, but the hardware, software, materials, controls, and production systems
would be commercialized to be more manufacturable.
Similarly,
- the physics would
be the same;
- the chemistry would be the same;
- - the biology would be the same;
- - the
thermodynamics would be the same; and
- the basic technology would be the
same
Another way to think of this is that whatever is being affected by the product or
service “doesn’t know the difference.” Here are several examples:
- he light rays
don’t know the difference;
- the flow of electronics don't know
- the difference;
the fluid flow doesn’t know the difference;
- the biological cells don't know the
difference;
- the sample being tested doesn’t know the difference;
- the sound
doesn’t know the difference; or f
- ill in your own blank: the ____________ doesn’t
know the difference.
The the hardest to
cull out from the crown jewels is the cabinet or frame, which is hard to ignore
and may remain after the prototype, or even after the proof-of-principle,
and must not suggest of even imply the filar parts. One way
around this common danger is to use universal bolt-together modular
kit parts (the "Erector Set" approach).
This is discussed in
Section 5.18 of the 2020 DFM book, with all of the benefits for cost,
availability, scalability and prioritization of resources to focus on what
customers buy products for. On this site many examples are illustrated on
the page on Manufacturable Research at https://www.design4manufacturability.com/research.htm
.
After identifying and preserving the crown jewels, the rest can be redesigned
for manufacturability, using all the techniques of the 2020
DFM book, without risking
any changes to the functionality or quality.
View Generically
View research results or experimental investigations generically so that
research does not specify, limit, or imply product architecture or production
strategy or any pivotal aspect of the design, when everyone is looking at a
physical proof-of-principle or experiment that “works.” Be sure to use generic
words do not suggest or limit the solution. Similarly, make sure that the
product requirements express the “voice of the customer” (Section 2.11 in
the DFM book) generically.
Generate
a Generic Description
A valuable exercise for a
commercialization Workshop would be to create a generic description of the
innovation. The team would identify the "crown jewels" and express them in the
most generic terms, such as “means to do ___________” As Patent Attorneys will
tell you, the words “means to. . . . .” are the most powerful words in patent
law and if an invention has a Claim starting with “means to,” that would be a
very broad claim indeed, thus resulting in a very broad and powerful patent.
In a workshop setting, the generic
words should be documented in real time on a word processor that is projected
onto a screen. If done right, the generic description will contain only the
crown jewels, and may even surprise the team with its brevity and conciseness.
This will focus valuable resources and time on preserving
the crown jewels and
improving the rest.
Generic Description
for Patents: If you are commercializing patented technology (or patent
pending or even expired patents) the claims will already contain generic
descriptions, especially the most valuable claims, which start with
or include the words: "Means to _________." Just ignore
the legalese and the "every combination of claim" wording.
Identify Supportive
Hardware that can be redesigned
The following recommendations of what supports the crown jewels and can
be redesigned for better manufacturability without changing the crown jewels or
putting any of it at risk.
Commercialization for Electronics
These are in order of the easiest
first with the highest return with lest effort and risk. These are the “low
hanging fruit.” The first category is for Electronics, followed by Hardware.
-
Replace custom power supplies with proven off-the-shelf
power supplies, even if it changes unusual voltages
on things that will be redesigned anyway (See Section 3.1.15 of the
DFM
Book )
• Replace manual wiring
harnesses with higher quality,
less-costly, and more reasily available off-the-shelf cables
made from standard wire and fittings to your custom dimensions and
shipped in 6 days, as early step in Manufacturable Research
at https://www.design4manufacturability.com/research.htm
.
-
cost and improve quality and reliability. See Section
3.1.13 of the DFM book, which prioritizes
electrical connection from the “best” to the “worst.”
• Replace custom PC boards for routine
function with
off-the-shelf circuit boards Then those functions can be performed
well at low-cost with the best availability, leaving you to focus on
the crown jewels. If not, then custom circuitry may need to be
designed, which can take a lot of resources and may complicate other
aspects of the design.
-
Replace custom controllers and other
supportive sub- systems with proven, low-cost
off-the-shelf versions, even if they have more capacity or
functionality than needed. They may also have higher ratings and
better quality, but all of this may still result in lower total cost
than all the costs of designing your own “just enough” custom
sub-systems. Some of this logic is explained in Figure 5.6.
• Base product architecture on standard
card-cages which expands the range of off-the-shelf
printed circuit boards available, most of which come in standard
card-cage formats, like VME. Eiro-card, and Multibus, STD, and PC
daughter cards. These are very easy to
assemble, just by plugging into the there card cage and they result in
more reliable connections through a single connection, usually gold
plated.
• Optimize supply, cost, and reliability
of materials, illumination sources, lasers, sound
sources, and internally generated motions, chemicals, vibrations,
electrical signals, and so forth.
• Reduce cost, space, and weight of
electronics by specifying higher levels of silicon integration,
eliminating manual wiring,, modularization (see below), combining
circuit boards, and, if not possible, replacing all circuit board
connectors with layers between boards (See Section 3.1.1 4 in the
DFM book) This may be too much a change for the
crown jewels, but if much of the supporting hardware is being
redesigned anyway, it might be worth considering.
Commercialization for Hardware
-
Replace custom hardware with
Off-the-Shelf parts, such as: electrical enclosures (and
all the hardware that goes inside), standard cables, guards, shields,
stairs, railing, platforms, and the fast turnaround build-to-order of
custom-dimension parts, for instance from ) Masumi, at http://us.misumi-ec.com/ which can ship custom
parts from their 3,000 catalogs in 6 days. See more about Off-the-Shelf
Parts in Section 5.18 with graphics at the page on Manufacturable
Research.
• Replace custom material handing devices
that feed or package your products. Be cautious about
investing time and money in automation or robotics just for labor cost
reduction without significant gains in quality, reliability, improved
safety, and
consistent functioning. Keep in mind that design guidelines for
automation are much more strict than for manufacturability in general.
Your product may need these
capabilities to be complete, but don’t use up valuable resources
designing
them.
• Replace Manual Fabrication that needs high-skilled labor
with concurrently engineered manufacturing equipment and tooling that
will greatly speed production and significantly lower many categories of
cost.
• For any redesigned supporting hardware,
replace hard-to-get parts that have long delivery times
with “pulled” parts and materials that arrive spontaneously (Section
4.2.1 in the DFM book) that will have
one tenth the
material overhead, as shown in Section 3.8.10 and 3.8.11. When choosing
parts, emphasize quality, availability, and the lowest cost-of-quality,
which means not sacrifice any of these for a cheap purchase price, as
emphasized in Section 6.1 and Figure 1.2.
• Replace slow batch production that goes to
inventory with Flow Manufacturing (Sections 4.1.1 in
the he DFM
Book ) that is shipped on-demand to customers
(Section 4.2). If the design of the crown jewels does not have to
be changed, this could greatly lower cost by eliminating inventory, and
enabling on-demand delivery.
• Replace welded frames and hard-to-build structures
and save a
lot of money, raise quality, and speed delivery for your products, future
derivatives, and provide backward-compatible replacements that can
become “drop in” replacements for existing products for near-term
savings that can actually help finance this product being developed or
commercialized. See DFM book Section 9.6 or www.design4manufacturability.com/steel-reduction-workshop.htm
For Regulated Products. If regulated
a product does not follow
manufacturable research , which is a button on the DFM site., it may be
even harder for them to avoid additional rounds of qualification,
certification, or clinical trials if they have to undergo additional
commercialization stages. Imagine if the crown jewels get favorable
publicity and generate intense interest in early release, only to have to go
through another commercialization rounds to replace unavailable or obsolete parts.
Consider Low-risk Redesigns of above Items
for the Crown Jewels Themselves
Themselves. This would be for changes that don’t affect the function, quality or
reliability. The general premise of commercialization is to preserve the crown
jewels, but if any of these redesign steps can be done without risk, some of the
steps that might have been missed in the manufacturable research (Section 3.9)
of the original design could be carefully considered.
Section 3.6.4 from the Creative
Chapter in the he DFM
Book quoted from step 3 from the “Nine
Keys to Creativity”as recommending reviewing assumptions because: “When
revisiting, you often find that assumptions are more striking than ideas.”
So the point here is to reexamine assumptions that were made in the original
formulation of the crown jewels themselves, especially any that might affect
commercialization, manufacturability, or scalability.
Do not substitute cheap parts for “cost reduction,” during
commercialization
especially on the crown jewels,
What Happens Without Commercialization
Without Commercialization, there is usually the temptation to simply take
research that “works” and then “draw it up and get it into production.” And that
might appear to be "early progress" and may temporarily please managers and
investors, or satisfy arbitrary deadlines that may really be counter-productive.
However, this will bring about several vulnerabilities, some potentially severe
in the following areas:
One of the biggest vulnerability of not
commercializing research may be that the product or process will not be ready to
produce in production quantities in production environments and this will result
in delays, during which many resources will be wasted fighting fires and
implementing change orders, which Toyota says, “always compromise both product
and process integrity”
• The
real time-to-market would be delayed, or the chances of product
success may be compromised, if commercialization is not attempted until all
testing is done or clinical trials are completed. Then, the company has the
dilemma of choosing between two unpleasant alternatives of: (a) try to go into
production without adequate commercialization or (b) delay the product launch to
do the commercialization, and then have to re-introduce the product and maybe
re-qualify the product/process or even repeat clinical trials.
• Cost. As shown in Figure 1.1 60% of a product’s cost is determined
by the concept/architecture, but the opportunity to achieve the lowest possible
cost is missed when the product architecture is based on a research prototype,
or worse, the breadboard! Further, after the parts are designed around
that, cost is not easily reduced, as shown in the
article on How Not to Lower Cost.
But trying cost reduction by change-order
wastes valuable resources, doesn’t really reduce cost, and, again, compromises
product and process integrity.
A big opportunity missed by research
scientists is Off-the-Shelf parts. Usually, scientists design only to “optimize”
functionality and then make the parts fit into “the” architecture, which
precludes standard Off-the-Shelf parts and usually requires very unusual parts,
sometimes with cost and availability problems (which in turn delays the real
time-to-market). By contrast, commercialization should start early with thorough
searches and selections of off-the-shelf parts and sub-systems and then the
product would be literally designed around the off-the-shelf parts. This is
enough of a paradox for engineer, but quite a foreign concept to research
scientists. However, off-the-shelf part strategy is a key element of
commercialization to encourage focusing efforts on the crown jewels.
• Quality. Research that is not
commercialized may very likely have quality and reliability problems because the
research that “works” is often done by highly skilled technicians, scientists,
and engineers who know how to make anything work (despite manufacturability
shortcomings) with sample sizes probably not statistically significant. However,
the design must be robust enough to be consistently repeated in production
environments and perform well in all anticipated user environments.
HOW TO COMMERCIALIZE PROTOTYPES & RESEARCH
The strategy to commercialize prototypes, breadboards, or applied research in any form should start with
identified and preserving the “crown
jewels” -- the technology that is the basic premise of the innovation or the
essence of what has been proven. Without changing the proven functionality,
everything surrounding the core technology and supporting systems would be designed
or redesigned for the best manufacturability, cost, quality, and time-to-market
while being integrated into an optimal product architecture and production
strategy.
The science would be the same, but the hardware,
software, materials, controls, and production systems would be commercialized to
be more manufacturable. Similarly, the physics would be the same; the chemistry
would be the same; the biology would be the same; the thermodynamics would be the same; the basis technology
would be the same. One way to think of this is that whatever is being affected
by the product or service “doesn’t know the difference.” Here are several
examples: the light rays don’t know the difference; the flow of electronics don't know the difference; the fluid doesn’t know the difference; the cells
don't know the difference; the sample
doesn’t know the difference; the sound doesn’t know the difference; or fill in your own blank: the ____________ doesn’t know the
difference.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and Space-X, said: "(Physics is) a good
framework for thinking . . . Boil things down to their fundamental truths and
reason up from there." - from the Tony Rohn book: "Elon Musk; 100
Success Lessons"
This analysis will quickly reveal what is not the
crown jewels, including cabinetry and power supplies, which can be bought
off-the-shelf quickly at lower cost and higher quality, provided this is
considered before arbitrary decisions preclude there use. For
instance, if an electronics module is designed to be 20" wide, it will not fit
into a standard 19" rack system.
If early architecture decisions ensure that
routine electronic functions can be performed by off-the-shelf circuit boards,
then they can be done well at low-cost with the best availability, leaving you
to focus on the crown jewels. If not, then custom circuitry may need
to be designed, which can take a lot of resources and may complicate other parts
of the design. For instance. if custom circuit
designs arbitrarily select whatever voltages everybody wants, then a custom power supply may be needed, instead
of picking a proven power supply and designing around the voltages that
are readily available off-the-shelf. This approach will free the design
team to focus on the crown-jewels instead of wasting precious time and resources
on boilerplate.
The format and size of the product or
production system should not be based on an arbitrary size, output, capacity,
that corresponds to some arbitrary value or round number. Rather the format and
size of the product should be optimized to correspond to the best
cost/performance ratio for the system, which may be determined by the lowest
cost/performance ratio for key purchased parts and subassemblies, as shown in
the section titled “Optimizing Architecture/System Design” in the book,
“Design for Manufacturability.”
This optimization may result in multiple units being used together for certain
markets, but this may still be the lowest cost per function while possibly
opening up new markets at the low end of the market.
HOW
NOT TO DO COMMERCIALIZATION
A common cause of commercialization challenges is the
following
fallacies of commercialization:
which are all based on the author's observations or quotes in the
press.
Once people like something that "works", they throw it
over the wall to production,
in the naive hopes that the following fallacies will solve all the enivitable problems
that will arise:
Fallacy #1: Prototypes can be easily "cost reduced" later. For reasons cited in the article
“How Not to Lower Cost,” cost is very
hard to remove after a product is designed because 80%
of cumulative lifetime cost is committed by design and so much is cast in
concrete that systematic cost reduction will be difficult. In addition,
the changes will cost money, which may not be paid back within the life of the
product. And the changes will also cost time, especially if
requalificaitons
are required, which may delay the time-to-market, sometimes seriously. Further, the changes may
induce more problems, thus needing yet more changes, thus expending more
hours, calendar time, and money to do the subsequent changes, which, in turn,
could possibly compromise functionality, quality, and reliability. See the
article:
Seven
Reasons Why "Cost Reduction" after Design Doesn't Work.
And the worst consequence of cost reduction
is that committing valuable resources to try
retroactive DFM or cost reduction after design takes them away from other
more-effective efforts developing low-cost products by design and
improving manufacturing and
quality.
Fallacy # 2: Launch the prototype or experiment into
production . Typically, as soon as a prototype
or experiment
"works," there is pressure to “draw it up and get it into production.” Unrefined
products that are not designed for manufacturability
will inevitably have problems with production launches, quality assurance,
consistent functionality, and actual production will cost more than targets.
Another variation of the same problem is when management or investors insist on
“proven technology” and then won’t allow any changes in the “proven” prototype, which
then goes into production without commercialization.
Fallacy # 3: Commercialization can be bypassed by
Risk Management. Some may think an un-commercialized design can be
“de-risked” by “proving success” which may just be “proving” varying aspects of
functionality. However good that makes people feel, such a product may still not
be manufacturable enough to ramp up quickly to stable production.
Fallacy #4: All that "young technologies" need is
maturity. Some people say what they are working on is "still a
young technology, so the costs are still high," which implies that costs
will naturally come down as it "matures," for instance, with the following very
common fallacies..
Fallacy #5:
Mass Production
alone will lower the cost. The venture may think it can depend on “Mass Production”
to provide “economies of scale.” In fact, many people believe the industrial
myth that the only way to get cost down is to get volume up, which may be
applicable to very high-volume commodity products that have little variation or few changes in
markets or designs. However, it
requires a large capital investment
to build such capability. If this capability is greater than firm orders, then
the venture is gambling that the economies-of-scale will lower the cost low
enough to generate enough demand to fill such a large factory. However, if the product has
not been commercialized, then this bet-the-company factory will be trying to
mass produce prototypes or unrefined products/services and have to deal with many
problems, like those cited above. And, since it is so hard to make an
inherently expensive product or service cheap, the actual cost reduction will result in a
very small return for the amount of money expended to set up a mass production
factory. Worse, the venture could be in trouble if the anticipated
cost savings don't materialize. Finally, mass production factories are so inflexible that it will be
hard to convert them to make a more manufacturable product later or any other
products for that matter. For this and many other reasons, mass production
is an obsolete paradigm for fast moving industries for reasons cited in the
mass
production article/ . Mass Production is being superseded
by the low-cost on-demand production in any quantity by
Build-to-Order
(for standard products) and
Mass Customization
(for custom products).
Ironically, a product designed with
Half-Cost principles will not depend on economies-of-scale to get the cost down,
thus minimizing the investment and the risk. Then ventures can focus resources to
commercializing products by design rather than all the effort it takes to
set up a mass production factory.
Thus, if the product was not commercialized, the
venture will be vulnerable to competitors who did commercialize their
products, especially if a lot of money and effort was invested to manufacture an un-commercialized
product
Fallacy # 6: Throw Automation at it. Automation is often viewed as a magic elixir that can bring down the cost
of anything. However, just like Mass Production, automation is expensive and, if
not done right, may be too inflexible to be useful for next-generation products
or other product variations. The most inflexible automation is fixed or
hard automation and tooling that only works for a particular product or
part.
Unfortunately, attempting automation will cost a lot of money now and may result in
little, if any, gain, unless there is a large demand for the chosen product...
Ironically, if products are designed very well for
manufacturability, they may not even need any automation for assembly.
Similarly, part fabrication could be easily "automated" by inexpensive flexible
automation that is available inn thousands of factories or job shops. The most
common example is programmable CNC machine tools, which can automatically
fabricate a wide range of parts at low cost, while being flexible enough to
quickly change over to build many different parts or improved variations.
Fallacy # 7: Robotics will lower the cost of anything. Although robots are great for creating buzz and look very
impressive in action, they are an expensive way to
try to lower cost, except for high-volume tasks where the work is dangerous, ultra clean, or
has very many difficult steps. Although the robots themselves are flexible
and can be reprogrammed for other jobs, the robot itself is only half the cost of its
whole system. The rest is the installation, programming, tooling, and
end-effectors (grippers), which are usually not very applicable to different
parts or the next job.
Good
design for manufacturability can eliminate most of
their need, for instance, making assembly so easy that robotics can’t even be
justified, thus saving much effort and cost.
The very first step may be to start with a
few hours of thought-leader
consulting
to help formulate strategies and
implementation planning.
In customized seminars and webinars,
these principles are presented in the context of your company amongst
designers, implementers, and managers, who can start the process of designing
half-cost products.
In customized workshops, brainstorming sessions
apply these methodologies to your products.
If you want to discuss
Commercialization t by phone ot e-mail, fill out this form:
copyright
© 2021 by David M. Anderson
Book-length
web-site on Half Cost Products has many related articles at: www.HalfCostProducts.com
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