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Assessing technical design trade-offs - key criteria for the design engineer

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Assessing technical design trade-offs – key criteria for the design engineer

Dunstan Power, Director of ByteSnap Design, on the critical factors for a winning design. How does the design engineer balance all three factors of technical specification, development cost and unit price?

While fast time-to-market, low product cost and high-quality technical specification are all key factors when launching new products, the process of making design decisions usually involves a trade-off between software and hardware.

Electronics is an art. Give multiple engineers the same specification and they will often create multiple different solutions that meet the specification perfectly. One design engineer may have considered unit cost as the most important factor while another will have designed the product to minimise development cost.

For a winning design that meets all its requirements, the design engineer needs to balance all three factors of technical specification, development cost and unit price, taking the following considerations into account from the start:

  • Time to market
  • Available development budget
  • Target market sale price
  • Anticipated sales volumes
  • Value in exceeding or modifying the specification

To find out more read the full article at: Tech Design Forum

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