In our experience, most hardware companies that launch a new product end up missing their projections widely — when it comes to budgets and timelines, often because of widespread quality issues and underestimated technical challenges. We have seen this in China, in Vietnam, in India, and other places.
With this worrying statistic in mind, our project managers and engineers help entrepreneurs, hardware startups, and midsize companies get into a position where they can successfully launch the production of a new product by providing a comprehensive new product introduction framework and support throughout.
What is Sofeast’s new product introduction solution?
If you are still at the conceptual/ideation phase and you still have all the development work ahead of you, you will generally need to go through these 6 steps:
- 1. Defining specifications
- 2. Feasibility/proof of concept
- 3. Prototyping
- 4. Tooling
- 5. Pre-production preparation
- 6. Production
We provide you with hands-on technical guidance, support, and management of these steps, or, if you are already somewhere along the process already, we assist you to move in the direction of mass production with lower risks.
You can see the NPI process typically used for electronic products, but equally appropriate for other new electro-mechanical products below with detailed explanations of actions taken in each phase (hover to zoom).
If you haven’t already launched several new products that were manufactured in Asia, the odds are truly against you. We made NPI a speciality of our firm. Our product engineering, quality & reliability assurance, sourcing & procurement, process engineering, and project management experts advise and support you along the way.
Sofeast is most helpful to companies that need to develop a new product with electrical, electronic, and/or mechanical components in China, India, or Vietnam. It matches our past experience in this domain and the competencies of our engineering team.
Read more about why hardware startups run into problems when launching new products.
Here are typical ways we help companies make their NPI and DFM successful:
- Consulting on setting the right strategy (deciding what type of manufacturer to use, which component suppliers need to be directed, etc.).
- Confirmation of realistic objectives for the project and documenting a plan that will be refreshed at each milestone.
- Assistance in screening and vetting the manufacturing partner(s).
- Review of product design (for manufacturability, for quality…), risk analysis, and guidance on improvements required.
- Engineering design (as needed, often in complement of your team), assembly and testing of prototypes.
- Setup of a reliability plan (including a test plan) and execution of the tests, failure analyses, and suggestions for improvement.
- Development of a compliance testing plan, and management of certifications.
- Advice about, and management of, tooling (molds, fixtures, dies, etc.) for production and testing.
- Preparing the assembly line: drafting or reviewing work instructions and QC checklists, review of production readiness during pilot run(s), etc.
- Follow up on the start of mass production, documentation of serious gaps, and guidance on an improvement plan.
Yes, you can see our 6 NPI phases that we’d use to structure your project and how they follow on from each other in this video walkthrough:
One of our project managers, as well as some of our engineers, are in frequent contact with you and update you every step of the way. We typically use collaborative software such as Trello or Asana, to make communication as fluid as possible.
How much does it cost?
Every production project is unique, so the cost of the new product introduction solution is totally dependent on the scope of work.
We can start to support your NPI process from 2,000 USD upwards or we can manage the entire development of your new product for you. In our experience, projects usually take at least 40+ hours of project management charged at US$50 per hour.
Just hit the button below to request more information and get a tailored quotation.
