Rising to the challenge through close collaboration

Sometimes the most complex purchases you make end up leaving you feeling stressed and frustrated. If you go for bespoke rather than ‘off the peg’, the challenge is to find a partner who will interpret what you want, deliver it to schedule, within budget and at the highest quality. They are the experts and you expect them to deliver.

The project starts but there is miscommunication and delays, despite the fact you had engaged the supplier that gave you confidence - you had enthusiastically described your vision and they seemed to get it.

Then the proposal comes back with a slightly different vision, some essentials are missing and the costs have risen. After follow up calls, and a revised quote, things proceed. However, throughout the project there is a feeling that they don’t really understand your hot buttons; they lack the flexibility and empathy to work closely with you, with the end result something nobody is entirely happy with.

Introducing a new embedded product onto the market is no different. It is one of the most complicated bespoke services to manage. There are multiple stakeholders: executive management who hold the purse strings, marketing teams and product planners who understand the competitive landscape. The technical directors are keen to ensure that the intellectual property creates a market leading device and engineers who would probably prefer that the whole product be designed in-house in the first place.

It is about obtaining the right information up front and the right hand knowing what the left hand is thinking. You do not want to get well down the line towards product manufacture only to hear from the customer’s marketing team that key features would not be ideal for its end users. This does happen. It is important to connect with all interested teams early on to accurately capture the user experience.

When planning the design through to manufacture of a product, and even beyond, the partnership between the customer and engineering services partner is key. It should be versatile and adaptive and demonstrate an in-depth capability and history of contributing to successful product launches in many different sectors of industry. But crucially, the outsourcing company must demonstrate empathy – the ability to listen to its customer and deliver in accordance with its needs.

An example of this process is when a leading aerospace company wanted to create the next generation of LED aircraft lighting for the exterior of the Boeing 777X. The lighting system had to be able to maintain high performance in harsh conditions, which required an IPC Class 3 circuit board assembly at an AS9100 quality level. It had to be sure that whichever company it partnered with would match the above criteria. Its partner had to be able to deliver a cost-effective solution, with a longer life and higher output, whilst hitting an aggressive timeline target.

To achieve this the partner had to be involved from the earliest stages with a high level of upfront collaboration. Early supplier engagement meant working closely with the customer’s team to validate the product design, identify any challenges and address them upfront. The Design and Development, New Product Introduction, Manufacturing and Supply Chain teams were able to analyse project needs and get started on finding solutions right away. Working with a global design through to manufacture company enabled the whole process to be accelerated, with global 24-hour project support.

To meet the very aggressive budget target meant finding every opportunity to remove cost from the product. Using a design for excellence process the design was utilised for fabrication to pinpoint the biggest cost drivers and then solutions engineered to reduce cost in those specific areas.

The highly-compressed timeline for evaluation and qualification builds required rapid sourcing of components and high-level, integrated programme management. Programme managers and supply chain experts worked to intelligently source lower-cost components and identify parts that could be ordered immediately to compress the timeline. The team analysed all needs upfront to identify any time or cost risks on the supplier side, then located alternative suppliers if necessary. Supply chain worked to minimise any reliance on single sources, bringing together multiple suppliers for the greatest efficiency.

Rapid prototyping also played a major role in both speeding up the process and cutting costs. Being able to quickly procure parts and assemble the product for evaluation meant that any concerns could be identified swiftly and communicated to bring fast resolution.

Throughout the process, constant communication with was key to keeping all of these moving parts on track. Listening carefully to the customer's needs at every stage with regular face-to-face meetings was key including on-site kaizen meetings, to ensure continuous improvement. Integrated product development team meetings happened at least weekly and consistent problem-solving sessions helped to identify any risks to project milestones. These could be discussed with all teams and solutions found long before issues could arise.

These are processes that should be applied to any electronic engineering project. Meeting the customer and hearing about its pain points, the challenges within its organisation, the business needs and what the key, non-negotiable features are – these are all important takeaways from those early meetings. The customer always understands its own market sector and technology best – but the partner may need to demonstrate to the customer how to incorporate its ideas into a successful and low risk product launch. This will include anticipating the trade-offs and compromises that will inevitably need to be made along the way.

A speedy response will help the customer keep ahead in its field and further understand the benefits of working with the right partner - not only from product inception but throughout its lifecycle.

To do this, a good engineering services partner has to demonstrate skills in customer service – and plenty of them. It’s not enough to have great engineers and excellent in-house tools - the whole team has to focus on how best to deliver these for the customer.

In most projects, there are changes to initial milestones and goals soon after project kick-off - so keeping track of scope changes and advising customers of the schedule and cost implications of these, is very important. Assessing technical risk through maintenance of a risk register will help the customer understand technical trade-offs, allowing them to weigh product performance against potential commercial returns.

Of course, there is a fine line between keeping close to the customer and irritating them. They outsourced the project for a reason, to reduce workload and not have to micromanage the project. But if the outsourcing partner’s focus is centred on the customer, the team should always think: “If the customer were here, what would they say?”

At the end of the day, adopting these practices enabled more than 30% to be removed from the originally estimated cost of the LED lighting system. Because the exterior lighting is for communication during approach and take off it is integral to passenger safety but its lower power consumption also adds to the plane’s higher fuel efficiency. This means the reduced energy demand also allows more power for passenger comforts such as in-flight connectivity and entertainment. The product’s longer life leads to lower maintenance, less downtime and fewer flight delays.

To achieve a great working partnership a win-win mentality is essential and this will forge a collaboration that benefits both sides throughout the development cycle. Adopting this culture allows this methodology to thrive, because the internal customer experience naturally determines the external customer experience.

Fundamental to this is excellent communications, written, verbal or face-to-face, and ideally a combination of all three. As Henry Ford put it: “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”. Today this is still relevant, as the secret to achieving the greatest success in design engineering services is never losing focus on the customer.

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