170: Current Trends of Modern Product Development

Paul Sagar is the Vice President of Product Management for the CREO software line at PTC. Paul started as a design engineer, then spent the last 25 years building CAD software for PTC to best match the needs of hardware design teams. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the latest trends in new product development for hardware startups, including best practices in composite materials, the electrification of products, and additive manufacturing for first manufacturing runs.

Today you will hear us talk about:

Composite design. Composite materials in the design. This is stuff from aerospace and racing.
More consumer product brands are starting to incorporate high-cost and high-quality composite materials into a relatively simple product
Composites can allow you more design flexibility while ensuring strength and quality with lightweight properties.
Composites can lead to more sustainability in hardware product design.
Composites have been historically very expensive to buy and manufacture; however, it is becoming more accessible.
Low-volume production capital cost is low, so you can focus on quality at low volume for a new product startup brand.
Electrification of everything is already happening.
Fundamentally design is needing to incorporate more electronics and more electrification.
Electronics need to collaborate more with mechanical engineering than ever before. Collaboration more than linear design.
Production design, especially in additive manufacturing, is evolving extremely quickly.
Additive manufacturing used to just be for rapid prototyping, but now additive manufacturing is being used for final part design, especially for first manufacturing runs.
Short-run additive manufacturing is far cheaper in regards to up-front capital costs (tooling costs).
There are some advantages to what you can actually design with additive manufacturing.
Additive manufacturing gets you to production faster.
Speed, quality, up front cost reduction, and increased design options.

EPISODE LINKS:

Paul Sagar Links:

LinkedIn | Creo | PTC | OnShape

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Mako Design Links:

https://www.makodesign.com/

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Partner: PTC’s best-in-class software solutions Onshape: The only cloud-native product development platform that delivers full-featured computer-aided design (CAD), integrated product data management (PDM) and enterprise analytics in a single system, and Creo: 3D CAD solution that provides designers with the most innovative tools to build better products faster, such as generative design, additive manufacturing, real-time simulation, IIoT, and augmented reality.

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories.