In the classic development of innovative, novel or untested product ideas, companies take high risks. Products are developed and produced without knowing whether the product will really catch on in the market. Making the right decisions about such large financial and time investments is difficult.
The industry standard for product development in mechanical engineering is VDI Guideline 2221, where the process is divided into four steps:
The development process of traditional engineering
Using this approach, a structured process is taken from a problem to the finished product, which can then be manufactured. Unfortunately, the process is extremely lengthy, inflexible and susceptible to errors.
For example, when specifying the list of requirements, it is very difficult to accurately forecast and prioritize every customer need. The selection of the ideal solution principles is also crucial when designing. In most cases, however, one only knows whether the right choice has been made after testing with potential customers.
If a small misjudgment is made in this approach, the resulting product might not fulfill market demands. Which will lead to months or even years of lost work.
That is why other methodologies have become established, especially in software development. Instead of obtaining customer feedback and testing results only with the finished product, rough, quickly developed prototypes or mockups are created very early on. After all, these can already provide very valuable answers to unsolved questions.
Does it solve the problem? Is it easy to use? What could be improved? How much would people pay for it?
The answers to these questions provide insight into whether one is on the right track, and if not, which direction one could alternatively take. The subsequent developments can then be implemented in the next, incrementally improved version. This is then again evaluated in order to receive further feedback.
In Design Sprints, the effort of producing and selling product ideas is bypassed by already testing prototypes that are as rudimentary as possible.
This new development process is therefore not linear as in classical engineering, but iterative. During development, it is seldom possible to be sure what exactly the goal is, or what properties the perfect product should have. No matter how thorough the market research, it remains speculative. By taking a step-by-step approach with regular evaluation, the process becomes very flexible and safe. The risk is thus significantly reduced.
One of the biggest advantages of this workflow is that many product ideas can be tested quickly and cost-effectively. It allows an informed decision to be made based on test and customer data as to which projects should be taken forward.
In contrast to software development, however, physical prototypes must also be manufactured. Having the individual parts produced off-site for that purpose usually requires a lot of time and is expensive. This is exactly why OmniWerk has its own workshop with a wide range of manufacturing capabilities. This allows us to develop new ideas and revisions in the shortest possible time and to produce them immediately in order to test them and receive customer feedback. This also enables us to quickly explore different approaches to a solution.
Our high degree of flexibility combined with regular control guarantees that the result meets all expectations.
OmniWerk offers a development process based on the methodologies of Lean Startup, Design Sprint and Scrum (Agile Develpoment).
Can OmniWerk help you realize your product idea? We are very happy to offer a free consultation. Call us at +41 79 830 75 99 or write an email to info@omniwerk.ch.