This one is both easy and straight forward to understand.

Do as much as possible in software.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Do as much as possible in software at every stage of the development.  Here is how that pans out:

• replace hardware with software that does the same function
• verify operation using unit tests and system tests within a soft environment
• do production test using on board software so the ATE is very simple
• do field diagnostics with on board software to make the diagnostics as cheap as possible
• do service and scheduled maintenance with on board software to minimise time and cost in these areas
• where suitable, use a bootloader to allow in field upgrade of the software

If you don’t already know, ATE = Automated Test Equipment.

The best thing about making software the core part of each of these areas, is that the manufacturing cost of software is effectively the jig and the time to program and test the parts.  Automation can be expensive, but if the device contains it’s own automation, then the production process costs plummet.  A simplified example:

You have a device with 8 inputs and 3 outputs.  You want to test all the inputs and outputs to make sure they work.  The traditional approach is to have a production ATE which applies known loads to test points and then measures against a series of scheduled tests which are controlled from one of the major production test equipment and systems suppliers.  It is not unusual to spend $50K on such a system even for a relatively simple device.  If you don’t believe; add up the software toolset costs, the man hours spent designing then building then coding then debugging then commissioning, the opportunity cost of those man hours and the materials costs.  It really does all add up.

Electronics Manufacture – lets look at the alternative

The test jig merely connects the outputs to the inputs with the appropriate loads in place.  The device is programmed with its own ATE code that then goes through the test process including requesting a serial number, and communicates the outcome back to the system which merely records the time, date, serial number, product version and test results.  It doesn’t matter if the inputs are analog or digital, the same philosophy can apply.  And if there is a big mismatch in the inputs and outputs, then put a simple multiplexer on the jig and let the unit manage it’s own test sequencing.

Another bonus: you update the system but the interconnections remain the same however the test sequence would have required altering the ATE software.  No need!  The on board ATE sequencer does it automatically and you don’t have to alter the production process at all.  It even tells you it is the new product and you didn’t have to touch a thing.

Of course there are classes of products that do need more than this.  Processes like burn in and quality metrics based acceptance testing.  But these are the 5% cases.  The alternative approach outlined above covers the other 95% and at a cost which can be orders of magnitude lower.  And you can always add extra features to the test jig if required and still let them be controlled by the unit under test.

Yet another bonus: self calibration!  The unit can calibrate itself based on the test results.  No need to support multiple different calibration techniques at the ATE.  It just says “I read X” and the unit under test looks at this value and what it reads and uses the one calibration process that applies to it.

And this features in one of our earlier posts on Strategies To Be More Profitable as it applies to Low Cost Electronics Manufacture in Australia.

Now I know this is simplifying it to its core essential elements, but that makes it easy to see the advantages and how much you can leverage them.

Less Electronics Hardware = Less Cost

The same applies to the other areas mentioned above.  Removing hardware and doing the same work in software is pretty obvious.  Less parts usually leads to less cost.  Above we looked at production line ATE.  And the same concept can obviously be applied to field and service diagnostics.

Field and service diagnostics

So here is another scenario.  Imagine you have a customer with a pump that isn’t pumping.  What to check first?  Easy, the simplest thing to swap out is the pump controller.  So you send them a replacement pump controller.  They pull the plugs, remove the device, put in a new one, and send the old one back under warranty.  You send it to the manufacturer.  They test it and there is nothing wrong and send it back to you.  But it’s pretty grubby and not suitable for resale as brand new.  Well maybe their test process isn’t up to scratch and it really wasn’t working in the field.  Anyway, it was still the thing to try first since anything else is a much bigger job to swap out. But now you’ve got all the hassle, a potential dispute with the manufacturer and the pump might still not pump with the new controller.  The score is basically NIL all round for this.  Everyone loses.

Now imaging this: the customer rings you and you ask them to go and press the orange button on the side of the pump controller.  It says via it’s LCD “Check Valve Reversed”.  Aha.  Not a pump controller problem at all.  The customer calls the plumber and gets him to fix the installation.  Done.  You look good, the customer got timely service and you sure are going to recommend this pump controller to the next customer ahead of the ones that don’t do this.

For each product category, the equivalent of the above 2 situation exists.  So will your product look this good if the customer has an issue.  It can if you think about it, and the cost might be trivial.  It might even cost less at manufacture, but it will always cost less in the long run.

And of course, if the product can have its software updated in the field, that saves a lot compared to having to return it to the manufacturer.  Orders of magnitude this time.

So that looks at parts cost, production process costs and support costs.

Reducing Development Cost

The second of the bullet points is looking at development cost.  The up front cost to get a working product.  We do a lot of work with small 8 bit and 16 bit microcontrollers and the development environments often don’t give you a lot of facilities to find faults.  It’s the combinations that get you.  Stop when input A is on, output B is off and the variable C is exactly 122 so I can look at what’s going wrong with my code.  Or you might have to pay a lot for an emulator with all those features.  And of course you have to put the hardware into the exact state you want as well.  How do you do that again?  That’s right, either sea of pots and switches or some clever and expensive hardware test equipment.

What we do a lot is build the project inside a software clone of the final system.  In the software industry this is called a mock.  Then we can use our standard PC coding and debugging tools to create scenarios and test against them.  You can test your logic in an automated way and you can put every possible input combination in and make sure it responds correctly.  Robert Bosch Australia Pty Ltd is one of our clients and we have worked on a number of projects for them.  For those who don’t know, the volume of Australian Electronics Manufacture they do at their Clayton Facility in Melbourne is very impressive.  They design, make and export millions of automotive electronic control units (ECUs) to Europe, Japan and the USA.  And the body electronics supplied by Bosch to the rest of the world is designed and made there.  Great stuff guys.

So a simple example of how we use this in our projects with them is a battery charging system we did which was all in software.  You will find reference to it from one of our Linked In recommenders Dale O’Brien who saw the process in action.  Basically, the full suite of tests took a week in real time, the primary test sequence required 54 hours, one test required sub-zero temperatures and none of this was 100% coverage.  Using a  software mock of the system we were able to do all the testing in 15 seconds including tests specifically to ensure 100% coverage.  That’s roughly a million time faster.  Debugging at light speed!  So we were able to address the logic and algorithm issues quickly and efficiently and have a very high confidence in the system.  Final verification in real time with final hardware and a normal test platform confirmed the operation but it was 6 months later.  So maybe we were really 25 million times faster.

Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe in testing on the final hardware.  After all, assumptions are one of the greatest dangers we face.  But at least prove you did correctly implement your solution within the assumptions you did make first.  Then when you learn something new you are only fixing one problem and not arguing about whether it was the assumption or the test that is wrong.

I feel a bit like I got on my hobby horse over that lot.  But I really do believe this can make a huge difference.

OK, time to go and design some more products for low cost electronics manufacture in Australia

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. 

Today we look at one of the Project Priorities Perspectives in action.  This was a case where performance was the most important factor and so minimising cost or time to market was a lower priority in the this Electronics Manufacture project.  In this case the PCB and electronics were Manufactured In Australia.

We were developing a wireless Data Logger product.  We selected 802.15.4 as the wireless protocol but did not need the interoperability of ZigBee.  A key issue here was Battery Life.  One use of the product was as a device left in the field and collected after 1 to 6 months.  The actual time interval depended on the use.  Since we have the client’s permission we can share details of the project and the product with you.

The product is a Corrosion Protection Data Logger and the client is Borgtech.  The first version is the Borgtech CPL2 and it is on the market today.

Some key product features made it a little tricky as an Electronics Design Project:

• inputs must withstand lightning strike impulses.  This equated to 5KV for 2 seconds according to the local standards!
• wireless connection for both convenience and also as an OH&S safety measure
• 6 months battery life
• 60dB rejection of mains frequencies at 50Hz and 60Hz
• 10MOhm input impedance
• a good profit margin

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what all the details mean, I wanted to show how we used the process to identify the best approach rather than go further into millivolts and microwatts.

Technically, this project was quite a challenge.  And a classic niche marketing example as well.  My initial approach was to minimise the production component cost and look at ways to meet the other objectives.  But it didn’t take long to realise that battery life was going to be the hardest challenge here.  I was able to use digital signal processing techniques (software) to meet the mains frequency rejection but the power requirements meant we were never going to get 6 months battery life and the radio side also contributed to that problem.  I’ll concentrate on the filtering problem.

Analogue Electronics to the rescue

Normally we have been removing electronics components and replacing them with software to save on product cost.  But this time, the priority was performance and not cost.  So I added components instead.  Below is a schematic representing the front end of the product.

Analogue Electronics Schematic

For those interested, this is a twin T filter.  It is a notch filter that takes out specific frequencies.  If you want more details then post a comment and I’ll add them.

The great thing about this is that it doesn’t use any Battery Power.  Unlike the software solution which uses the whole power budget on its own.  So from the batteries perspective, it is FREE!  It did cost some design effort and did add some production cost but the battery got off lightly.

So here is how the priorities played out for this project.  To get the performance, it cost a bit more and took a bit longer.  The outcome was the right product at an acceptable price point and in a market with growing demand.  Powerful stuff.

Now we did have to do a lot of other stuff to deliver this product so that it met every one of the design objectives.  It also delivered on the client’s expectations and met the cost target too.  It helped a lot that Borgtech understood their market and were able to guide us when making the decisions about priorities.

In practice, we make decision like the one above every day.  Going left at the right time when everyone else is going right can deliver outstanding results. Marc Dussault refers to this as antimimeticisomorphism.

Next I want to look at going the opposite way to the path we took for this project.  This is a case where cost is king and performance must be good enough but is not the primary priority.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

This continues our review of the Project Priorities Perspective.  See the Project Priorities Perspective post for the concept behind this and Time and Cost versus Performance and Time and Performance versus Cost for a look at those trade offs and how they affect Low Cost Electronics Manufacture in Australia.

Here is a visual view of this set of electronics manufacturing trade offs:

Project Priorities Perspective - Performance and Cost versus Time

The previous two perspectives looked at cost and performance and their effect on the other priorities.  This one looks at time.  Time is a two edged sword.  It is easy to spend but hard to save.

Here are some of the trade offs that affect time:

• if you spend more time, you can get the unit cost down or the performance up
• if you reduce features or performance you can have it quicker
• if you spend more time you can often select and use less expensive resources
• to get it quickly, you usually have to buy in either IP or specialised expertise
• being later to market usually reduces your profit
• being early to market usually increases your profit
• doing it right the first time saves time
• increasing production automation decreases production cycle time

So this is more straight forward than the other perspectives.  To get it faster, you have to either reduce features and performance, or buy in specialist IP or expertise.  And if you can wait longer, then you have more choices for how you go about it and can either increase the features, improve the performance or reduce the cost.

So this wraps up this very cursory look at the Project Priorities Perspective.  It is a powerful tool that is easy to apply and can dramatically improve your results.  The key, is that it makes you think about the priorities and what outcome you are really after.  At the end of the day, if you aren’t clear about your outcome, then you don’t have a basis to plan or succeed.

Next I will be looking at some practical project tips for increasing profits and some surprising ways to improve performance.  And you have probably already worked out that you can apply it more than just Electronics Manufacture in Australia.  You have, haven’t you?

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

This continues our review of the Project Priorities Perspective.  See the Project Priorities Perspective post for the concept behind this and Time and Performance versus Cost for a look at those trade offs.

Here is a visual view of this set of trade offs:

Project Priorities Perspective - Time and Cost versus Performance

Reducing performance can decrease cost and it can also decrease the time it takes to achieve an outcome.  This is the classic marketing dilemma.  In general:

• More features or more performance increases cost
• More features or more performance increases time to market
• Do I know the relationship between these and the market share I can achieve?’
• Will a lower featured product at a lower price point give me better overall profit?
• What features MUST I have as a minimum?
• What performance MUST I have as a minimum?
• Will delaying market release reduce my overall profits?

Of these, the last is the only one that is usually true. The rest all depend. It comes down to how well you know your customers, your competitors, your market and how good your marketing plan is.

Going for the ultimate product is usually fraught with difficulty, firstly because there is no such thing as Perfect Information,  and secondly because it takes longer; sometimes the equivalent of forever in marketing terms.

Another way of expressing this is Feature Creep.  This problem often exists before the product is even ready for market.  Not knowing the market well, the temptation is to add every possible feature to ensure no objections at the point of sale. It normally results from a lack of confidence in the marketing position rather than a genuine evaluation of the benefit of features to overall profitability.

The final way of looking at the challenge is expressed in an old adage, “Perfection is the Poison of Profitability“.

So now the trade off exists:

• Will I add more features in the hope of better sales?
• Will I reduce features to decrease cost and time to market?
• Which features will I keep and which will go, and why?

In my experience, this is one of the most common trade offs that is handled poorly in less successful companies.  And it stems from not knowing their market well enough to be able to position the product.

The answer - know your customers and why they buy from you.  Then you have a basis for deciding. Up until then, it is guesswork.

You might have noticed that although we focus on low cost electronics manufacture in Australia, these principles can be applied to product development in general.

Next we will look at Time as the primary priority.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

This continues our review of the Project Priorities Perspective.  See the Project Priorities Perspective post for the concept behind this.

This is the easiest of the the trade offs to appreciate.  If you want it quickly and it has to be good, then you are going to pay more for it.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shop around for the best price you can get, it just means that all things being equal, the cost for this trade off will tend to be higher.

There are several ways this pans out:

• you can buy in technology or expertise to save time or improve performance
• you can use less tooling or automation to decrease the time to market
• you can hire more experienced or qualified staff
• you can use a more expensive technology
• you can partner with another business to spread the workload

There is overlap between these possibilities and several may be required to achieve what you are aiming for.

Here is the visual representation for this scenario:

Project Priorities Perspective

Now cost is a complicated trade off because there are many contributors to cost and their impact is felt in different phases of the project.  For instance:

• buying in technologies tends to happen up front and is an early cost contributor
• creation and tooling costs are amortised over the production and so dissipate slowly
• staffing costs also happen up front
• production unit costs can be reduced by tooling and automation
• reducing tooling and automation increases rework
• tooling and automation cost up front and increase time to the first production unit
• short cutting development effort can increase production and warranty costs
• component costs can be reduced with creation or tooling costs
• warranty and maintenance costs happen after production
• maintenance costs can continue on past the selling life of the product
• more expensive technologies can be better proven and so quicker to implement
• more expensive technologies can provide better performance in the same development timeframe
• another business can reduce your time to market but you will share some of the profit with them
• being late to market can eliminate the profit all together, the ultimate cost

And estimating costs can be difficult.  Particularly downstream costs like market entry delay and ongoing maintenance and support costs.  See our recent post on Strategies To Be More Profitable for a more detailed look at the contributors to the Total Cost Of Ownership of a product.

But in general, selecting the right technology, the right team and the right supply chain will give you the greatest likelihood of getting to where you want to be, when you need to be there.

So who are you going to partner with to ensure your next product  comes to market on time and on specification?

Next up we will look at getting to market faster while reducing cost.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

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