Special
Finished is not finished!
Today, developers can often turn a product idea into a working prototype in a short period of time. However, such a prototype is only suitable for series production to a limited extent.
The Pareto principle
Are you familiar with Pareto and his principle? The scion of a Genoese merchant family recognized as early as the 19th century that 80% of results can be achieved with 20% of the effort.
Unfortunately, to achieve the remaining 20% for a 100% result, you still have to put in 80% effort. And Pareto didn't even know about today's complex embedded projects. Pareto's principle still applies here too.
As a resourceful developer and “maker,” you can now turn a product idea into a prototype very quickly. You can quickly click together the necessary components on the Internet and press “order.”
Once you have the hardware, you can immediately search for suitable software components on GitHub for Arduinos, Raspberries, or other platforms. Quickly program some “glue code” around it and the product is as good as finished.
You can now make a big impression during your presentation to management: Implementation in record time! Product almost finished! Everyone is convinced that the product should be offered on the market as soon as possible. And because it went so quickly, the next steps will probably not be so complicated either.
Prototype only partially suitable for series production
Now Mr. Pareto strikes mercilessly, driving everyone involved in the project to despair. The components of the prototype cannot be reused economically in series production. The software components used prove to be unstable, threatening failures in the field.
And for smooth, reproducible production and assembly, the product design must first be optimized down to the last detail. Now the hard work really begins, and the developer's enthusiasm wanes. They would rather be creative again and create something new!
Rapid prototyping and the new possibilities offered by the maker and open source community now provide a well-stocked toolbox for quickly implementing new ideas. When presenting the results, however, it is important to remain grounded despite all the euphoria and to make it clear to everyone involved that we are talking about prototypes, one-offs, or proof-of-concepts.
According to Pareto, you still have at least four-fifths of the way to go before you have a finished series product.