Qualification:

Once you’ve gotten feedback from the customers and made sure that your prototype can survive in real-world environments, it’s time to get the design qualified and certified.  Engineering qualification can be done in-house, while we test against ASTM and ISO standards. This is where the hardcore stress tests come in. It’s not enough to see if the product works in a regular environment, you put it in the most extreme environments it will ever see to see how long it lasts.  Bring it to the failure point, rebuild it stronger, then make it fail again until it is as strong as it needs to be to survive in the wild. Once the design has been qualified to withstand everything you can throw at it, there are safety tests and certifications that you need that will make sure your product is fit for mass market.

Final Product

There are specific organizations for each industry that you must work with to get your products certified.  Most important are the safety tests that need to be done, to make sure that everyone using the product will be protected, and that the product complies with all applicable regulations. With the final build certified, you need to run benchmark tests, so you know exactly what the ultimate capabilities are.  Now that the product is done, you need to ramp up manufacturing.

Mass Market:

It’s one thing to make 1, 10, maybe even 100 copies of a product. You can use small-scale manufacturing and build things by hand.  To get to market, you need to look at mass manufacturing.  What is the best way to make your product?  Can you use a different fabrication method to cut costs or lead times? There may be some small changes to accommodate the best manufacturing techniques, but at this point, you can’t change too much or else you must go through the certifications again.

With the final product complete, the manufacturing set up; you need to create your network to get your product on the store shelves.