For an innovation to be considered successful, you must sell it, and to sell it, you must manufacture it.

Too often, though, manufacturing is treated as an afterthought in the innovation process. Many innovators don’t think about it until they have a working prototype and are ready to begin mass production.

If you don’t consider the constraints of manufacturing ahead of time, you may develop a solution that is unfeasible, impractical, or too costly to produce.

The sooner you begin thinking about manufacturing, the better. As soon as you have a potential solution in mind, ask these five questions to make sure it is worth pursuing.

#1: Who is going to make the solution?

The first question is simple but also critical: Who is going to manufacture the solution? 

If you’re working in a corporate setting, you may have access to in-house manufacturing capabilities. Or your company might have designated partners or contractors it works with.

For start-up innovators, you will be responsible for contracting and coordinating all your own manufacturers. You may need to go overseas and use different manufacturers for different pieces. There are a lot of moving parts in the manufacturing process, and the earlier you get started, the less overwhelming it will be.

#2: What are the manufacturer’s capabilities?

Once you’ve identified the manufacturer(s), you can identify any potential limitations you must account for. If your solution is already within your manufacturer’s capabilities, fantastic! But what happens if you need something the manufacturer cannot make? 

For start-up innovators, it’s often best to go back to question #1 and try to find a different manufacturer who does have the required capabilities. In the worst-case scenario, you may discover that no manufacturer can do what you want at your given price point and time frames, in which case it’s back to the drawing board for your solution.

For corporate innovators, start by understanding what you can and cannot make in-house. Most large corporations engaging in new product development have the ability to manufacture, but maintaining the facilities, equipment, and staff needed to produce every possible part needed is too costly and complicated. For example, if your company specializes in bending and welding steel, it’s probably not going to start fabricating electronics from the ground up. They would need completely different equipment and experts on staff to do so.

When something is outside of the company’s wheelhouse of manufacturing, you have to go outside of the company. In some cases, companies will acquire, contract, or partner with another company in order to gain the required manufacturing capabilities. They may also invest in developing the capabilities themselves. For example, we once worked on a project where a solution required a part that could only be made through 3D printing. So the company bought the needed 3D printer. It was a $500,000 investment, but the ROI was worth it. 

Sometimes, though, the company will choose to abandon the solution entirely, particularly if the cost, time, and logistics of figuring out the manufacturing do not outweigh the potential rewards of the innovation. 

For both start-up and corporate innovators, you may need to design your solution with the manufacturing limitations in mind. If that’s the case, it’s best to discover it early, before you expend a lot of resources developing a solution that cannot be manufactured.

#3: Can you make the solution reliable?

On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers flew an airplane for the first time for twelve seconds. The first flight of over an hour would not occur until six years later, in 1909, and the first transatlantic flight would take another ten years, occurring in 1919.

A working prototype is great, but a reliable solution is even better. This is where the rubber meets the road. Once you’ve established that your solution will work, can you make it in a way that it will work forever (or as long as possible)?

This question is usually closely tied to manufacturing. The more precise and accurate you can be in manufacturing—in terms of materials, dimensions, etc.—the greater the reliability of your solution.

Of course, the tighter the specifications, the more expensive it’s going to be to manufacture. That’s just the way it is. So that takes us to our next question.

#4: How much will manufacturing the solution cost?

You can create an incredible solution that solves a real problem people care about, but if it costs $1,000 when people are only willing to spend $100, it’s not going to succeed. The manufacturing costs will determine the price, so you need to estimate how much the solution will cost to manufacture.

One of the biggest mistakes innovators make is assuming their solution can be made cheaper than it actually can be. Do the research to come up with an accurate estimate. Consider the cost of materials (keeping reliability in mind) as well as the cost of the manufacturing.

Based on the estimated price of your solution, will people be willing to buy it?

#5: How much time will the manufacturing take?

Another mistake innovators make is underestimating the time required for manufacturing. It almost always costs more and takes longer than expected. Manufacturing is rarely a simple plug-and-play model. You need specific parts, and they all take time to produce.

Here’s how it usually plays out. You need a motor, so you order from a Chinese supplier. It takes forever to arrive. Then you test it, and it doesn’t work. So you go back to the supplier and get a new one sent. This next one works. Okay, great! Now you need the drive circuit to go with the motor. You order, wait, and finally get it, and it won’t fit into your specified dimensions! Back to the drawing board to configure another setup. You finally figure that out, and now you need to work on battery management. Turns out that is extraordinarily difficult. You need a battery manager chip in every battery pack to make sure the batteries are balanced. So you order, wait, and rinse and repeat.

All of this can take weeks, months, and even years to work out. On one of our projects, the company converted from a brushed motor to a brushless DC motor, and it took them nine months to get the right motors and drives. 

In manufacturing, a variety of issues will inevitably pop up. Each issue takes time to resolve, and often, one thing relies on another, so you must solve these issues sequentially, not concurrently. The fact that manufacturing can be such a lengthy process is another great reason to start thinking about it early. 

From Afterthought to Forethought

As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Manufacturing is a critical factor in whether your innovation will be successful, and it is rarely as easy and straightforward as you might hope. Start thinking about it now so that you will be prepared.

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