Rapid Product Development

As an engineering manager for a large mobile computer company, Joe was asked to develop a rugged mobile computer for a new customer.

The challenge was that this was a competitive bidding situation and the customer required a fully functional prototype and proposal in 3 months. The company had an in-house product development team, but they were not available. All that had been done before Joe took on the project was that the company had created a Power Point presentation on possible product attributes and what the product could look like. The company needed to find a product development team, design a rugged mobile computer, and build a prototype in 3 months.

Joe successfully lead a team of engineers and contractors to design and build a rugged mobile computer in 3 months. The product was a success allowing the software / solutions partner to put their application code on the device and present it to the customer.

Joe he took a project from a PowerPoint presentation to a dozen working rugged mobile computer prototypes in the customers hands running their software in less than 3 months – selected a design, sourced contractors, negotiated contracts, lead a project team of inside and contracted staff; designed and built a new wireless handheld computer running CE 4.2 with bar code imager and 802.11b radio.

Challenges:

1. The 3 month schedule was a hard one as the prototype needed to be ready for a customer field test.
2. In additon to the prototypes, a proposal needed to be written, and a production supply chain put into place.
3. While the company had an in-house development team they were not available for this project.