Industrial design for business: minimize costs, save on unnecessary, invest in the main

- Save on startup - the money will come in handy!

It is believed that industrial design only indirectly affects the economy of the product. In a small series of articles we want to tell you that this is not quite so - the design can significantly increase profits in the business.
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Ultimately, the goal of any business is to make money. You can increase profits either by reducing costs, or by increasing revenues. Well, or both together. In this article, we will discuss how a competent approach to product design can reduce and optimize costs, thereby increasing the business margin. The second part is about how to make a product that will sell itself.

The principle is simple, but it must be kept strictly in the right dosage - save where you can really save, but no more.

Manufacturability: cut off all unnecessary

One of the most important items of expenditure in the production of a new product is the cost of a mold for casting plastics. The cost of manufacturing a mold for a single part can vary from hundreds to several tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the size and complexity of the part. Now multiply several times, as there are usually a lot of details in the product. As a result, we get a tangible amount of investments at the start of preparation for production.

- It is millions, by the way!

Developers with sufficient experience by combining parts can significantly reduce their number, and hence the number of required molds. Equally important, it will significantly reduce the time to assemble your product on the production line.

Simplification of the product design and its technological forethought is one of the easiest ways to reduce production costs. The smaller parts and simpler and faster assembly - the lower the cost. I will give an example from life - the instrument case for the Axiom company:



The processing of the construction plus the change of the contractor reduced the production cost 6 times.

- At six, Karl!

Logistics: Stop Carrying Air

By reducing the size of the product packaging or changing its shape, you can significantly reduce logistics costs.

- Do you know how much air you carry ?!

At the stage of project development of a product, it is necessary to take into account geography: remoteness in the real physical space of the globe of production and sales areas. Most of the goods surrounding us are made in China, and only imported to Russia. Therefore, the cost of logistics is always an important component in the cost of the product. This is especially evident on low-margin products and large series of thousands and tens of thousands of products. The job of reducing logistical costs can provide tangible savings. An example of aerobatics in this direction - IKEA. Literally everything is subject to the idea of ​​minimizing the volume of packaging, and one hundred percent filling of the space of warehouses and transport containers.

An example from our practice: the developers were given the task of reducing the cost of the electric kettle. The designers left the usual shape of the teapot, removed the handle inside, and thereby reduced the size of the package by 40% - which allowed great savings on logistics.


QP Kettle

- Just a non-standard pen!

Another example is when packaging designers started from the shape of the product itself. Changing the shape of the box for Geniled light bulbs from the traditional parallelepiped to the shape of a truncated pyramid allowed us to reduce the batch packing volume by almost 2 times!


LED packaging of “Geniled” light bulbs

In fact, there are many similar examples in our daily life. Most household items from the bin and plastic cup to the baby pot are made with regard to their maximum stackability - so as not to carry air across the entire planet.

Assembly: the most expensive is manual labor.

Slightly above, we have already touched on the topic of product assembly. This is one of the most expensive stages of production, since it contains an element of manual labor. Manual assembly costs money - not without reason in China the average salary is already higher than the Russian. The share of the cost of the assembly in the cost of the product does not "scale", that is, does not change significantly depending on the circulation, such as the share of the cost of molds, which decreases in proportion to the size of the series. As far as possible, they try to automate the assembly line with the help of robots, a conveyor belt and various devices, but so far it is impossible to completely get rid of manual labor during assembly. The critical parameter is the time taken to assemble the product and the number of defects occurring at this stage.

- In order to work less with hands, let's work first with the head!

If you think about the assembly at the design stage of the product, it can reduce costs! For clarity - a few examples. To accelerate the assembly of the body can use special latches and "eyes" on the details. A similar principle of quickly connecting body parts without a single screw is used in the new Xbox One S.


Xbox one s

To speed up the assembly of electronics, “rails” are also often used, which are part of the body along which the electronic board is quickly and conveniently inserted and fixed. An example of such a solution is the intercom iKtotam Connector project. Its body is made of extruded aluminum, in which “rails” for electronic parts are provided in advance.



intercom case iKtotam Connector

Ultrasonic welding technology can be used to quickly and tightly connect a small plastic housing. So in the LED flash for smartphones and tablets iBlazr assembly occurs by ultrasonic welding.


Flash for iBlazr smartphones and tablets

Unification: let's not reinvent the wheel

To reduce costs in the development of electronics, you should try to use ready-made components that are already massively manufactured: boards, sensors, screens, transformers, microchips. Agree, creating your own electronic parts is very expensive!

- Why redo the work already done ?!

So in one of the projects with which we worked, it was decided to replace the screen with a 4: 3 aspect ratio (such screens go out of circulation) on a 16: 9 screen (widely distributed and mass produced for smartphones).

- And users who need to change the part will thank you!

If you are faced with the task of creating not a single product, but an entire line, you can save money by using common components and parts within it. At the development stage, you can think over which body parts will be the same for the entire line, and which parts will be individual for a particular product. A commonplace example is household appliances, which use many standardized parts. Some components may be in different models and from different manufacturers.


Floor fan "Polaris"

If the changes between parts of different products are not too significant, molds with inserts can be used. For example, in this way, you can personalize the product in the B2B segment by inviting companies to embed their logo directly into the case details using inserts in the mold.


Logo "Polaris" made the insert in the mold

Modern electronics manufacturers have gone so far along the path of unification that they simply use absolutely identical chips in their line, which already contain all the capabilities of top-end products, and for low-end models, some of the possibilities are simply blocked. So for example, is the case with the line of TVs Samsung. Another example is the Tesla model S cars, where for an additional fee you can unlock the increased battery capacity and the autopilot capability already incorporated during production.

- Mistress note: this is all already in the product, you just have to pay for it!

Tesla s

The choice of production technology: the task determines. The correct choice of technology for your task can significantly, at times, reduce the cost of production. For example, the transition from casting aluminum to the extrusion of a profile allowed the “Good Things” startup to reduce the price of equipment by 4 times: from 40 to 10 thousand dollars.

- Two million rubles for nothing just for a minute!

The initial design of the project iKtotam

Another example. If you look at the heat guns on the market, you will see that their appearance is fundamentally based on the heating part itself, which, as a rule, lies on the fuel tank.


Heat Heaters

Electric equipment, handles, wheels, etc. are added to it. When the designers worked on the sketches, it was decided not to look at other manufacturers and change the production technology from the stamp to the rotary casting. The result was unexpected: a new technology allowed the product to stand out with its appearance, simplify the assembly and maintenance of the device:


Heater "Profteplo"

Contractor selection: time is money

Time is an important factor in the launch of any product. Previously entered the market - started sales earlier - earned earlier and returned investments. But any product is always weeks for the formation of its ideas, months for development and years for launching a product directly to the market.

Cost reduction is also possible here - by choosing a development contractor. However, I would like to advise you to choose it not according to the price list, and, in general, not in accordance with the typical ideas about the contractor, but on the basis of the specifics of your business processes personally.

- Not too clear? Explain!

To begin with, in principle, the product is able to develop different characters or organizations:

a) staff members - designers, designers;
b) freelancers;
c) small studios;
d) a full cycle bureau (from design to electronics).

If you release a single product and can focus entirely on its particulars, then it makes sense to work with freelancers. So you can fully control all stages of the project, work on any of its details - in fact, manually manage the developers. Yes, such projects, as a rule, are stretched in time and are the most risky from the point of view of the organization, since only you and no one else are responsible for the communication between the participants and the decisions made. In other words, we get a slowdown and an increase in communication costs, but at the same time - maximum attention and control at all stages.

Another situation is when you have several products produced, or they are launched regularly, for example, once every six months or a year. Then it is better to choose a contractor from the category of small studios. You will not linger on intermediate decisions, influencing the project and controlling it only at key moments. An additional plus is a reduction in the time spent on communication and a reduction in the development time due to the experience of the contractor. Minus - a higher, in comparison with freelancers, the price of development, which, however, is compensated by the predictability of the project.

Working with a full-cycle office, as well as creating your own development department, is a prerogative of large businesses or companies for whom regular and fully predictable development of new products is an important part of business processes and sales. There are few such companies, but they exist.

- In a nutshell: choose a contractor for yourself. The choice will be less, but more precisely.

Summarizing: a short paragraph

If you have read this far, most likely you are interested in developing your own product.

- ï ?!

Keep our check-list, checking on which your project, you can evaluate the ability to reduce costs, and thus increase profits.

- Is it possible to reduce the number of parts, so that the functionality or design does not suffer?
- Is it possible to make the product more technologically? Give the verification documentation to experienced designers;
- Is it possible to replace the technology with another and get lower cost? Go over with the designers around the product. The main question - the estimated circulation in the first year;
- Is it possible to reduce the amount of packaging or change the product for better stackability? Write down the supply chain from production to the counter;
- If there are several products, is there a part of them that can be unified?
- Are there ways to reduce the time and complexity of assembly? Set the task for developers to think about it;
- Try to paint the entire project, and make all the stages where there are no decisions important for the project as a whole, on a third-party contractor. Consider the specifics of your business processes.

Well, now back to the very beginning

Industrial design can not only save your money, but also sell your product “automatically”. About how design replaces marketing, when it is not needed and when without it in any way - we tell in the second part . We guarantee there is more information.

The authors:

»Ilya Tkach, industrial designer
» Anvos , Andrey Vostrikov, Head of the Project Office
»Kokhreidze Daria, journalist