Product Trend Tips & Best Practices in Product Development
When selecting new products or deciding to use a certain manufacturer, it is important to choose a company that looks to the future. From customer needs to new technologies, a forward-thinking company will provide cutting edge knowledge that can directly impact product schedules, man hours, safety, and ultimately, your bottom line. Chuck Wilk, product manager at Victaulic explains items that are key in new product development and when implementing new products and technologies.
Research and Development – Manufacturers spend millions of dollars on product research and development. The complete process of R&D, from initial concept to when a product reaches the market can take decades, depending upon the industry. Understanding that without this extensive research and testing, products would not be as safe, efficient, or reliable is crucial in implementing new technologies to a customer’s best advantage. For information on the R&D spending strategies of companies in the European Union see this article from the Forum for European-Australian Science and Technology Cooperation (FEAST) http://www.feast.org/articles/?ID=793, which also explains the impact R&D can have on U.S. companies.
Take advantage of available resources – The Mechanical Contractor’s Association of America (MCAA) distributes the MCAA Smart Solutions newsletter, which showcases new technologies and promotes cost-saving and productivity-enhancing applications available from members of MCAA’s Manufacturer/Supplier Council. Newsletters like this do the research on new products and technologies for you and compile it into a complete and comprehensive directory. In addition, educational presentations, webinars and teleconferences regularly address recent innovations and new technologies to provide information on the advancements and share how you can incorporate these new tools in your business. Look to industry-specific event directories or the MCAA 2008/2009 Year of Learning Opportunities Guide, available at http://www.mcaa.org/education/edbro.pdf, which has a complete educational event list.
Utilize customer feedback and industry trends – Taking into consideration the needs of the customer as well as the issues that customers are facing in the industry are key objectives when developing a new product. By addressing an industry need, a product becomes extremely beneficial, and in some cases, essential to the customer. Providing a solution to a common problem is one of best ways a manufacturer can become an asset to a customer. Companies often share case studies of particularly challenging projects either on their own website or in top industry publications. By sharing first-hand accounts of the problems faced by workers on the job and how the issue was resolved, case studies are the next best thing to getting direct insight from those who know best, your peers in the field.
Beta Sites – Beta testing allows contractors and engineers to implement a product in its final research stage. Products in the beta testing stage have already been proven to work, and work well. The final phase of R&D is what allows a product to truly come to fruition; a real life application is the last step before a product becomes widely available to the market.
Analysis and Improvement – Constant innovation and improvement of existing products are the keys to developing products that evolve with the customer’s needs. Companies that are continuously evaluating their product’s performance and improving upon the existing design help customers stay ahead in the field. With each improvement, a product can become more efficient, cost-effective or user-friendly. Look for companies that continually release new product versions; these new versions demonstrate that the company is constantly improving upon the existing products to make them more effective to you, the customer.
Chuck Wilk is a Product Manager at Victaulic. He has been at Victaulic for 11 years, with 10 years in product development. Wilk earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University and an M.B.A. from Lehigh University.