Product Development Cycle

Companies hire when demand for their products and services is rising. If demand drops, companies will freeze hiring, lay off workers, reduce orders for materials, retain critical employees and preserve cash.

When companies are investing in product and market development, they hire engineers. After the product development cycle is complete and no further development is planned, some engineers will move to other companies on their own. It is important for companies to keep development work in the pipeline to avoid losing engineers.

Development is expensive and should be funded by retained earnings. The return on investment is tracked by the sale and profit earned by selling the new design.

Sustained development of products involves continual improvements, replacing weak systems or obsolete components and focusing on making the original design better. Continual development is routine for Military hardware and software based on tighter specifications. Development for commercial products is usually aimed at system failures that trigger recalls.

Off-shoring design may have price advantages, but it results in compromising intellectual property, increases in rejection and return of bad parts and no control over the process. Product quality is not continually improved and suffers from avoidable costs.

Outsourcing manufacturing requires that systems engineers from the customer are embedded with the vendor. This prevents errors, but requires real-time problem identification and correction.

The electronics industry design cycle began in the 1970s with the implementation of integrated circuits and ended in the 2000s with the retooling of telephony equipment. This industry was off-shored and will need to be rebuilt.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader