Product Engineering Guide for Enterprises to Transform Ideas into Reality

February 16, 2022

Blog

In today’s highly competitive market, most companies are focusing on developing the new-age solution for their businesses. In the same way, the customers’ expectations keep on evolving with time. To meet the customer expectations and deliver a secure and reliable solution in the market is the biggest challenge of every organization.

Companies look for a technology partner who has complete expertise in designing and developing an innovative solution that gives a competitive edge to their business and has the knowledge to leverage the latest technologies.

How Product Engineering Services Accelerate Business Growth

Today’s business world is volatile and constantly evolving with time. However, having said that there are times when Enterprises and OEMs have moved on from the traditional technology to a more flexible and advanced one at a frantic pace. This change towards the modern technology landscape has led the businesses to continued progression, faster turnaround time, transparent progress, and increased customer-centricity.

The most critical challenge Enterprises or OEMs face is the transformation of their legacy product to IoT enabled smart products or the pressure of innovation/optimization. Therefore, there are different stages of product engineering, starting from the initial concept to the end of the product life cycle, where the Enterprises or OEMs can leverage each phase as per their business need and develop their solution. Now let’s understand each phase of product engineering services in detail which will help you successfully launch your next product in the market.

 

Process of Product Engineering Services:

Product engineering is the typical process to design and develop smart products, following various hardware, embedded, mechanical, software, and other IT services.

 

• Product Conceptualization/Ideation: This is the first and most important phase of the product life cycle. Here, the company brainstorms and generates a unique idea which further they consult with the product development team. The development team or consulting partners deeply analyzes the concept of the product, performs a feasibility study, and prepares a detailed document that summarizes the product specification. On the basis of the feasibility study, the company will understand whether they need to go ahead with this product idea or not.

Consider the below factors when initiating a new product development:

• • Targeted Audience: You should have a clear idea of who will be the consumers for your product. Keeping the consumers and their needs in mind will help you in defining the product concept better.
  • Innovative Features: Think about what innovative feature you are adding to your product and prepare a raw document. If you have an existing similar product portfolio in the market, then it's easy to decide and understand the consumers needs quickly.
  • SWOT Analysis: This is an effective approach where the product development team, scrum master, and agile development team determines the product strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats at an early stage and based on that they are able to build the new concept of the product.

 

• Product Architecture: After the ideation, the team evaluates the idea and defines the physical component and functional element of the product. This stage plays a significant role in defining how to design, develop, test, manufacture, and launch a new product offering.

Typically, the product architecture is defined in two types: Modular & Integral. Determining the product architecture at an early stage is very important as it affects most aspects of the product design and manufacturing stages. The product development team should know what role and activities the team needs to perform in later stages.

• Product Design and Development: Once the concept and architecture are finalized, the project stakeholders evaluate the project design idea and produce the product mockups based on the business requirement and technical aspects of the product. A successful product design may take several iterative approaches based on the latest techniques.

The design phase typically includes a product development plan whether it's for hardware or software, or a combination of both. This development phase includes the hardware selection, system architecture, CAD, POC (Proof of Concept), etc.

During the design and development phase, you need to work on specifics like:

• • Strong Teamwork: Make sure that you have strong communication with your product team during the design phase so that you can keep track of the product roadmap and check that you're on the same line.
  • Risk Analysis: Before the product creation or launch stage, it’s very important to do market research and analyze that is there are any potential risks associated with the production. If yes, then plan out the alternative option.
  • Development Strategy: You need to break down the design and development plan into multiple releases and set the priorities defining which task is important and critical, and how much completion time each task will take.
  • Analysis Feasibility Study: Evaluate your product strategy and work on the estimated timeline. Consider all aspects of the product development lifecycle and check if it is feasible for the team to deliver the product in the estimated timeline.
  • Quality: Make sure you have time to take care of the product quality because if you are investing lots of money, time, and effort then you expect the business growth in return. If the product quality satisfies your customer then there are multiple opportunities in the market waiting for you.

 

• Product Testing and Validation: After the development phase, the team tests the product to ensure that the product is error-free and validates the performance and robustness of the product to ensure that it is designed as per the expectation. The main goal of this phase is to check whether it's working effectively or not.

To establish the quality of your product, you can:

• • Run the In-house Testing Campaign: Although your product is completed and ready to launch still you need to ensure the product quality before it goes live in the market. A customer’s reaction towards your product and performance can decide the product's success. Testing the product in a real market environment may lead to difficulty, it’s better to run an internal campaign that will give you an actual idea about your product performance and quality measures.
  • Collect end-users feedback: The most important and critical phase is to know the experience of the product by your end-customers. The feedback will help you in refining your product in a much better way.
• Manufacturing: This phase itself follows different stages, starting from designing, assembling to production, and testing the product components. Furthermore, there are several other factors that product engineering service providers should ensure while manufacturing:
  • Raw Materials and Supplies: Manufacturing services rely on raw materials from different sources. Some of the factors or issues that occurred during the time of material delivery leads to delays in production. For smooth supply operation and well-managed inventory, you need to list the raw materials.
  • Aesthetic Design: The aesthetic is the most obvious thing that everyone notices. Sometimes the book is judged by its cover, the same way before knowing the specifications of the product, the customer will look at the design and feel of the product. You need to stay updated with the design trends in your industry.
• Product Sustenance Support: This is the last and crucial phase of the engineering cycle. Once the product is launched in the market, with time, every product needs some updates, feature enhancements, and requires continuous maintenance.
  • Complete Customer Support: Make sure you maintain a good customer support system that vigorously works on customer feedback and provides continuous support.
  • Sustaining Engineering: Add new service and feature enhancements to extend the life of the legacy products and meet the needs of modern and innovative applications for better operational efficiency and user experience.

 

What a Professional Product Engineering Service Provider Can Deliver to Your Business:

Outsourcing the right product engineering professionals to bring your ambitious ideas to reality can be an efficient and cost-effective way. Building an internal team may require high investment in terms of cost and time. Here, are some of the outsourcing benefits most frequently seen: 

• The right product development company will help you in streamlining your product cycle quickly.
• Leverage modern technology, tools, and platforms to make your product future-proof and competitive in the marketplace.
• Experience and expertise will help in clearing all the roadblocks and delivering the product on-time.
• Design custom applications as per your business and customer requirements.
• On-going support and maintenance of the product.

Choosing the comprehensive and dedicated offshore product engineering team will ensure innovation, experience, and expertise on technology tools, on-time delivery, cost, end-to-end support, and much more.

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Shruti Garg is associated with VOLANSYS Technologies as a Senior Marketing Executive with proven experience in content creation, brand promotions, digital marketing, lead generation, and partner relationships. She has more than 4 years of experience in Sales and Marketing.