How Engineers Build Products from Scratch

you ever wonder how big tech companies or even startups are able to take a sketch and turn it into a mass-produced piece of tech a quantities of hundreds thousands or even Millions it's an important thing for engineers to know and it's not something that's usually taught in school you usually learn it from your work experiences so I'll try to explain the product roadmap that we follow depending on the product and how complicated it is it can take anywhere from like one to five years it's broken down into several stages design prototype EVT DVT pvt and MP EVT stands for engineering validation trial DVT stands for design validation trial pvt stands for production validation trial and MP stands for mass production as you can tell we love using acronyms for everything in the design stage you look at what design requirements you have that you're trying to solve for you'll start by creating some sketches that satisfy these requirements then you'll jump into CAD software like SolidWorks on on shape Etc to bring that idea to life you just need to make sure that the thing you're making is practical and can actually be built if it has sharp corners or abstract geometry then it can be built and needs to be simplified you need to design with the end goal in mind and when I see end goal I'm referring to the manufacturing process that will be used to make it if the thing you're making is going to be 3D printed then you can probably get away with more abstract geometries but if you're going with something like injection molding CNC Machining or casting then you have to follow the design rules that correspond to each manufacturing process next we have the Prototype phase which can be broken down into three stages prototype manufacturing prototype build and prototype test first you'd reach out to a CM which stands for contract manufacturer and you share with mu engineering drawings they'll then give you feedback on it until you make an engineering drawing that's manufacturable and they can read keep in mind that the manufacturing process you use when you're making a prototype doesn't necessarily have to be the exact same as a manufacturing process you use for the final product that's because you can just be making one prototype and some manufacturing processes like injection molding require a lot of money and effort to set up so it doesn't make sense to use a process like that for just one prototype processes like that are usually saved when you're making a part at such high volume even though it's just a prototype you still need to be making engineering drawings like this however they don't need to be super detailed at this stage though once all the drawings are sent out to the CM they'll probably require some time to manufacture it we call that lead time based on the manufacturer we can probably allocate maybe 30 days for this stage anyways once the individual prototype parts are built we then bring them together and assemble them to create our final product this is important because we need to see how all these different parts will fit together and we're definitely going to run into a lot of issues here but I say I can allocate about 15 days for the Prototype build we then test the Prototype after it's built a common test that can be done is wider Ingress testing thing we're testing to see if this device is waterproof we can usually allocate maybe another 15 days for the testing phase of this prototype EDT stands for engineering validation trial after all the Prototype tests are done and you make the required changes we need to start finalizing the design here and EVD can be further broken down into four steps first there's EVT design like what we can no longer make any electrical Hardware changes however the product design team can still make some changes but nothing too major though second there's EVT line setup where we start planning how we want to organize and structure the production line in order to make it easy to build and assemble Parts Third there's EVT build and shipment which start off by building parts and smaller sub-assemblies we then combine some of these parts and sub-assemblies together to create even larger sub-assemblies until we reach the final product the length of the stage really depends on the manufacturer building your assemblies and the suppliers supplying you as Parts sometimes will we build Parts happening a different location than where parts are assembled for example we can have plastic injection molded parts and metal CNC machine parts built in Taiwan then have them shipped to a different manufacturer in Texas we'll be assembling all these parts together fourth it then gets shipped out to where we're going to be doing testing on this build there's usually a whole testing and validation plan ready for this stage of the build and its purpose is just to make sure that this build satisfied all the design requirements we set out early on sometimes if for sure on time we can do testing for critical requirements first then if we have time we'll do testing for other requirements and there's this stereotype out there that Engineers can't spell to the point where there's even merge out there making fun of us honestly it's low-key true that's why we tend to use symbols and abbreviations a lot for example instead of writing therefore I'd use these three dots to represent that word but I can't always take this shortcut if I'm writing emails at work creating presentations and writing up some documentation and either tool I can rely on that's what grammarly comes in we're sponsoring this part of the video I just add the Chrome extension and it immediately gives me suggestions every time I make a grammar or spelling error which makes my work more efficient and saves me a ton of time like here when I'm drafting this email I need to use the word unnecessary and I don't know how to spell it does it have two C's or one c not sure so I'll just guess and grammarly will fix it for me this is the free version of grammarly that helps me with spelling grammar and punctuation but if you upgrade to grammarly premium it will rewrite and rephrase your hard to read sentences to keep your writing clear and to the point to help you get your work done much quicker that being said work smarter not harder and get your work done faster with grammarly sign up for a free account and get 20 off grammarly premium moving on DVT stands for design validation trial the focus here is to finalize the mechanical hardware and to lock the mechanical designs of the product this is important because now also only prepared for mass production usually for EVT we're making less than 100 pieces but for DVT we'd up it and make just under 500 pieces and ideally we want these pieces to be fully functional there will definitely be a ton of issues here though as we try to optimize the factory Line pvt Stands for production validation trial which is the final stage before mass production here we want to lock the factory assembly line and figure out what could potentially slow it down for example sometimes they make the assembly line move faster and just be easier we can design fixtures to be placed on the line for example hypothetically speaking let's say one of the assembly processes for this machine is to drill holes at the back when I place it on the table like this I can't drill into it because the drill hits the table so I have to move it to the edge of the table in order to have enough space for the drill but in order to see what I'm drilling I have to squat down all this takes time and requires a lot of effort from the operator doing this task however if I bring in this fixture an operator doesn't have to constantly bend down and hurt their back since they have a clear view of where they should drill also because this fixture holds this black machine they can drill with just one hand making this process much much faster if it takes someone five seconds to do this step on an assembly line instead of 30 seconds then this is a huge win and that fixture was 100 worth it also once the assembly is built we need to do a bunch of QA testing to make sure this part is functional and satisfies its requirements and usually there's at least five rules we follow when testing first tests should have a clear purpose and assess one feature at a time that way if it feels you know exactly what the problem is second you should Implement regression that means you should do a test multiple times and not just once third track and report all your tests and results that way you have data that you can refer to that will help you figure out what problems will most likely occur in the future fourth perform in visual testing as well as assembly testing basically have tests that assess a part on its own as well as tests that assess the part when it's used within a much bigger assembly and finally have a quantifiable metric that will help you determine whether or not a test has passed or failed for example instead of saying quickly move fluid from pump to container you should say pump fluid from analysis chamber to funnel in under 30 seconds Moving On by the end of pvt we should aim to have just under 2 000 pieces a decent amount of them should be good enough to be used by actual customers next we have MP which stands for mass production now we don't just randomly start off by one day building a thousand pieces a day you can start off by building 50 units a day then 200 units a day then 500 units a day Etc how fast you ramp up depends on how optimized the factory line is and how much demand you have for the product You're Building also The Operators working on the assembly line are just humans like us so the more practice they get building Parts the better and faster they'll be which will make the mass production process move a lot smoother so it really Falls onto the engineer to make the operator's job a lot easier by creating parts that are not difficult to assemble in manufacture don't design complicated parts and don't give them unclear instructions also sometimes operators will randomly quit so you need to bring in new operators and teach them again to keep the line moving this obviously can take some time but that's just part of what happens when we're building Hardware products now that we understand what the product roadmap looks like with all the steps involved design Proto EVT DVT pvt and mass production you might be wondering how long does each step realistically take so to answer that question let's look at the bigger picture here it all really depends on how soon you want this product to be out in the market and how big and complex it actually is let's say you want to release this product in 18 months or a year and a half so the design stage would take roughly about 75 days creating a prototype would take about 60 days EVT would take at least 6 6-8 weeks DBT will take at least eight to ten weeks pvt would also take at least eight to ten weeks then as you ramp up to mass production and produce all these parts that will probably take at least three to six months that being said to quickly summarize a product roadmap for a hardware product starts off with idea and brainstorming which leads to design iteration followed by developing a prototype we then have three validation trials EVT DVT and pvt that leads us to mass production which starts off slow but speeds up as the weeks and months go by anyways I hope this video brought you value if it did check out this video where I share with you what do I do as a mechanical design engineer or check out that video where I share a day in my life as an engineer anyways I'll see you in the next one peace foreign

Channel: Tamer Shaheen

Views: 64,519

Keywords: Grammarly

Id: Zwqayhf_R2Q

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022