24 January 2014
Having worked in the product design industry for many years, GX Design Engineers is best placed to offer both advice and support to their customers. The answers to the initial considerations below, will determine the final outcome and success of your product and ensure the journey in getting there is an enjoyable one. Seeing your product reach the market is the continuation of the journey.
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Collaboration
“Most projects at some stage go through similar problems from obtaining finance to lack of ideas,” comments Claire Banks, business development manager for GX Design Engineers. “We would always recommend harnessing everyone’s input from different disciplines at the outset.”
Whilst R&D departments know and appreciate who the end customer is and how they may utilise a product, they can sometimes be too close to a problem. Using an external design engineering company, like the GX Group, can allow a different perspective.
GX Group takes a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to working with their customers using in-house specialists who have expertise in the key disciplines including mechanical, industrial, electronics, software and optronics. This has often led to a cross fertilisation of ideas and consequently ensured commercial success for many clients including AssayMetric and their Fluorescence Plate Reader.GX Group outlines considerations that are imperative to a successful product development process
Being a Stakeholder
At the heart of GX Group’s collaborative approach is to ensure that the client becomes involved in the project by making them a stakeholder. They are seen as integral to the team as development partners early on in the project’s life.
Feasibility Studies
Product development is not a case of ‘build it and they may come’; rather early on in the process spend time and money investing in feasibility studies to understand where the product you would like to develop would sit in the market place. GX Group offers a fresh perspective and invests a considerable amount of time researching the market thoroughly to ensure a product has a point of differentiation. Quite often good products build on the platform where others have failed once a need has been identified.
Finance
Looking for a partner early on to share the costs of your product development can be a benefit; as can be exploring the funding available via the grants such as Horizon 2020 as an example. Keeping a handle on costs is vital, product development is by its nature expensive and in many cases can be a leap of faith. Choosing the right company is half the battle, look for one that has a history of delivering viable projects on time. GX Group has an enviable reputation in the medical and scientific industry of turning innovative ideas into commercial reality.