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Implementing the hardware and software design is only part of the equation when bringing products to market. Here are some other important
aspects to consider when developing a product.
Specification
A detailed functional specification is critical to the success of a project as it sets everyone's expectations and provides a cohesive framework around
which all team members can work.
Project Management
&
Process
awareness
Effective project management provides decision making, problem resolution,
co-ordination, communication, planning and overall project success.
All
Paragon
employees
have
worked
to
ISO
9001
standards
and
understand
and
adhere
to
product
development
processes.
Product compliance
Regulatory compliance is critical for most products, be it safety, environmental,
EMC or emissions. Usually a test house is involved in the testing and a test plan needs to be developed depending on the countries
to be covered. Standards do vary between countries and exceptions between the standards therefore need to be tested. It is always a trade-off
between cost and coverage. It is always cheaper to do all the testing at once for all the countries required but this is a large up front cost and may not be
the best approach if the initial rollout is only say NZ and Australia.
We have previously worked on compliance testing
to Australasian, North American and
European
standards.
Design For Manufacture
Component selection, multi sourcing components, component layout,
PCB layout and PCB testability are all issues to be resolved before a product can be manufactured.
Over the years we have produced designs that have been manufactured by a large range of usually 3rd party manufacturers.
These have included IQL in China, Solectron in Europe, Alpine (when they existed) and AEMS in NZ, Aplus in the USA and recently
we have just started discussions with ABTEC in Auckland regarding their environment.
Thorough testing
Depending on the project, it is often worth doing extensive
'alpha' and 'Beta' test phases to verify that product performs in line with both the developer and the end-customers expectations.
It's always better to catch problems before production starts!
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