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HW Development Challenges
- Hardware development is physical in nature; therefore, it is significantly different from the intangible development of software products.
- Changes to hardware are generally more expensive due to wasted development efforts, raw material costs, shipping and handling, expediting fees, inventory, and material management costs. Software changes are virtual in nature and so they typically result in re-work and wasted development efforts.
- This significant difference in the cost of altering a design makes it imperative that hardware teams have less expensive ways to test out their ideas before ordering more expensive prototype, pilot, or production materials.
- This is one reason why teams brainstorm many design concepts for components and use virtual modeling, 3-D printing, and simulations to fail the concepts as early as possible, obtaining meaningful customer feedback along the way.
- They then arrive at the best design solutions and continue to use virtual modeling, 3-D printing, and simulations during sourcing lead times to gain important product feedback about the slice of functionality they are developing. The teams push to build “something” demonstrable to the customer to solicit feedback regardless of prototype, pilot, or production part availability.