The author Avery Louie from Bolt.io gives a fantastic yet easy to comprehend case study on the Aria Smart Scale from Fitbit highlighting the design choices that lead to shorter time to market and reduced design costs.
It is a thumb rule in general that you need to custom design a product to reduce per unit cost in the long run; disadvantage being longer design cycle and higher design costs but the advantage is more margin per unit for your business. On the other hand, you can use off the shelf components instead of custom designing everything from scratch which significantly reduces overall design costs and time, but increases the cost per unit. Every product manager or designer goes through this usual tradeoff based on time, budget and profitability goals. This case study shows how Fitbit team navigated through these tradeoffs and came up with a successful product without compromising on the aesthetics and functionality of the product.
Avery talks about choices made for aiding Design For Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Asembly (DFA) along with images of the actual parts. For example, a simple design of a snap on the base plate to hold wires in place saves on the tooling cost and cycle time. Another interesting insight is that the assembly sequence is such that the full functional system can be tested before final assembly. Trust me that even if it saves only 30 seconds per unit being assembled in your production line, it is worth it. The article also covers the motivations for selecting specific electronic and mechanical parts, along with guidance on when to use off the shelf parts verses when to custom design for a specific functionality; one of the motivations being saving huge cost and time on certifying your product for FCC/CE. Last but not the least, it also talks about using an existing IP from someone else to fast track your time to market, at a small premium of course.
It is a thumb rule in general that you need to custom design a product to reduce per unit cost in the long run; disadvantage being longer design cycle and higher design costs but the advantage is more margin per unit for your business. On the other hand, you can use off the shelf components instead of custom designing everything from scratch which significantly reduces overall design costs and time, but increases the cost per unit. Every product manager or designer goes through this usual tradeoff based on time, budget and profitability goals. This case study shows how Fitbit team navigated through these tradeoffs and came up with a successful product without compromising on the aesthetics and functionality of the product.
Avery talks about choices made for aiding Design For Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Asembly (DFA) along with images of the actual parts. For example, a simple design of a snap on the base plate to hold wires in place saves on the tooling cost and cycle time. Another interesting insight is that the assembly sequence is such that the full functional system can be tested before final assembly. Trust me that even if it saves only 30 seconds per unit being assembled in your production line, it is worth it. The article also covers the motivations for selecting specific electronic and mechanical parts, along with guidance on when to use off the shelf parts verses when to custom design for a specific functionality; one of the motivations being saving huge cost and time on certifying your product for FCC/CE. Last but not the least, it also talks about using an existing IP from someone else to fast track your time to market, at a small premium of course.
