• Project Management
Product Specifications
• Conceptual and Detail Design
• Use of Design Tools
• Rapid Prototype and Model Manufacture
• Design Verification
• IPR and Patents Strategy
• Type Approvals
• Procurement - tooling, components and assemblies
• Technology Expertise

Project Management

PPD can provide full, best practice, project management capability to support your requirements. According to your internal resources and infrastructure, we will either adopt full project management responsibility, taking on board procurement and manufacturing implementation management aspects of the project, or work in collaboration with your existing team. As a minimum, our process includes the following principles -

Product Specifications

The front end of the process is critical and clear product specifications are essential to ensure the customer needs are fully understood and the design brief is unambiguous. The PPD team have experience in assisting with strategic product market plans and will work closely with your marketing and engineering teams to create a product specification that meets your business needs -

• Formulation and management of requirement specifications working from the most basic of market briefs.

• Use as key project management tool to support design reviews, verification plans, component specifications etc.

Conceptual and Detail Design

PPD will apply a structured process to develop concept and detail design, applied to either new products or major design changes -

• Optimum concepts defined using concept selection techniques

• Concept design review stage gate

• Industrial Design to include assessment of ergonomic factors

• Detail design release stage gate prior to release of major capital expenditure

Design Output:

3D solid models, 2D drawings. Our core CAD tool is Solidworks and we can manage all the usual file formats.

Use of Design Tools

To ensure we deliver a high quality, robust solution we will apply Lean Design and 6 Sigma techniques, applied to either new products or major design changes. The following tools will be applied where appropriate -

• Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

• Risk Assessment

• Statistical tolerance analysis

• Finite Element Analysis

• Product specification conformance status monitoring

• Design For Manufacture and Assembly

Rapid Prototype and Model Manufacture

We will provide appearance models or functional prototypes where required for both market testing and product verification purposes.

Design Verification

We will coordinate all aspects of product verification and validation, including user tests, functional and performance tests, electrical safety and EMC tests and reliability programmes.

IPR and Patents Strategy

We have significant experience with developing and managing patent strategy. Between them, the PPD team have been nominated inventors for more than 25 filed patents, and specifically will advise on the best means of protecting inventive and novel designs. We have had a close working relationship with a notable West Midlands patents attorney for more than 10 years and will coordinate drafting and filing of patents or design registrations. Through experience, we can also provide advice on licensing and royalty agreements.

Type Approvals:

This is an area the PPD team have significant experience and will manage type approvals test programmes against a range of standards.

• We will advise on submission or manage the complete approvals process

• We have experience in European approvals including VDE, North American UL approvals and CE marking

• EMC compliance tests

• We have specific intimate knowledge of IEC and EN standards relating to safety of household products and electrical appliances.

Procurement - tooling, components and assemblies:

• The PPD team is experienced in procurement of tooling, components and assemblies, especially in low cost countries.

Areas of Technology Expertise include

• Radiant and Conductive heating elements for domestic and commercial applications (see www.vitroheat.com )

• High temperature sensor applications in electromechanical expansion element and bimetal, and electronic PRTD and thermistor technologies

• Application of electronic temperature and energy regulation controls and user interface solutions

• High Temperature Insulation mediums including moulding and fabrication of microporous and granular materials

• Ceramics components for thermal and high dielectric strength applications

• Thermoplastic injection moulding component design, process requirements and tooling

• Metal Presswork with multi progression tooling, pressure and gravity die-casting, sintering and metal injection moulding.