What is Manufacturing Preparation?
Manufacturing preparation is a tiered service ranging from a basic sense-check of manufacturing readiness from an independent engineer to a deep analysis and refinement of design including a production-ready technical package and supplier liaison.
Committing to tooling is a significant investment in the development process. Tooling mistakes can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds up-front and even more in continuous costs during production.
The aim of manufacturing preparation is to catch these mistakes before committing to investing in tools as well as optimising parts for efficient, scalable manufacture, cost, reliability, sustainability and more. As well as part optimisation, it focusses on ease of assembly and creating efficient solutions to assembly processes that reduce production costs dramatically. Supplier Liaison is critical at this stage of development and is offered in the service along with production ready documentation.
Flexible scopes offer almost certain cost savings whether it's simply catching an assembly error or embedded cost savings by optimising part design for robust efficient production. Please get in touch to find out more, I'd love to hear about your specific product needs.
What Does Manufacturing Preparation Involve?
What Are The Objective Outputs?
The subjective goal of manufacturing preparation is to take a design and make it ready and efficient for any scale of production, to build confidence in the manufacturability of the design, reduce scrappage and decrease the likelihood of tooling mistakes and costly re-design and investment. I will support you though the process of going from hand built prototypes to soft tooled prototypes to cutting steel tools and entering pilot builds. By the end, your product should be ready for scaled up production runs.
Translated into objective outputs this might include some or all of the following:
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Independent Design for Manufacture part reviews
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Independent Design for Assembly review
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Tolerance Stack analysis, fastener strategy review
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Risk assessment and cost-driver reports
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Part optimisation and refinement
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Assembly process optimisation
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Engineering support through supplier engagement
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Design refinement post soft tools
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Support through tooling tweaks
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Production level CAD files
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Part drawings
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Assembly drawings
Detail-Designed and Tested Product
Manufacturing Preparation
-Cost Efficient part refinement for production
- Efficient Assembly Process
- Mass produceable product
- Supplier Ready Documentation
Which Tier is Right for Me?
Basic
Best for products with lower volume production runs with a focus on catching mistakes, reducing cost and ensuring manufacturability without cosmetic defects.
Perfect for Entrepreneurs or founders without engineering expertise but maybe product design experience looking for a basic assessment of manufacturability and recommendations for improvement.
Core
Great for small teams that don't have dedicated engineering resource needing all of the essential documentation for going to production with a supplier as well as high confidence in design optimisation for manufacturing efficiency and cosmetic quality.
Also a good fit for any company needing more resource to take an already designed concept through to mass production
Comprehensive
Best for more established companies needing a technically rigorous and strategic optimisation of parts as well as assembly process. Perfect for products with high quality and efficiency needs.
Also ideal for single Entrepreneurs needing comprehensive support through the whole production process and need confidence in the manufacturability of their design before committing hundreds of thousands of pounds into tooling.
Cost and Timeline
I like to be transparent about the work I do for accountability and for building great relationships with partners. Get in touch and I'd love to have a chat about timeline and pricing quotations for your specific product. I quote by estimating a timeline of engineering hours needed for the service and apply an hourly rate. To give an idea of the costs involved here are some rough prices and timelines based on varying complexity and demand of the products:
Basic
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2 - 6 Weeks
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~£3,000 - £9,000
Core
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8 - 16 Weeks
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~£12,000 - £24,000
Comprehensive
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14 - 30 Weeks
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~£21,000 - £45,000
Note: During the production process, there is plenty of downtime, the timeline given is based on weeks of engineering work to be done, not a timeline for taking a product from design to mass production .
Services Timeline
Below is a typical timeline of where each stand-alone service typically falls in the product development process. If you choose to go through the whole product development process with me, the services are far more integrated and iterative meaning that design verification and design for manufacturing considerations are baked into the detailed design and prototyping phases.
This reduces duplicated work in scope overlap and ensures smooth knowledge transfer throughout the process as well as a more natural, although still structured, development process.
Click on the buttons below to explore the Product Development service and find out more about how it works. Alternatively, if you know you need a specific stand-alone service, click the individual service buttons below to find out more
(All Services Integrated)