Escaping the Cycle of Design Churn: How aPriori Unleashes Innovation

Key Takeaways

• Design churn happens when design engineers have to go back and re-design the same products that they were readying for launch, distracting them from their ability to focus on new innovation
• It also impacts the organization’s ability to meet goals and grow revenue
• By measuring product vitality and finding ways to “design right the first time”, engineers can get all critical factors (manufacturability, cost, carbon) right in the design stage

The Full Article

In the fast-paced world of manufacturing, design churn is a silent killer of innovation. Design churn is the repeated, time-consuming back-and-forth between design, engineering, and procurement teams to finalize a product for manufacturability and cost-effectiveness.

It happens when design engineers are forced to repeatedly revisit and rework products that should have already been launched. This isn’t just about inefficiency. It’s a drain on innovation and a bottleneck in a company’s growth objectives. Instead of focusing on developing the next groundbreaking products, an organization’s most experienced talent is mired in remediating design issues.

The result? Companies fall behind competitors, and their new product vitality—the measure of how much revenue new products contribute—dips. This is a critical issue, as innovative new products are typically the ones with the highest profit margins.

So, how do you escape this cycle and empower your engineers to “design right the first time?“

The answer lies in giving them the right knowledge and guidance at the earliest stages of product development.

New Product Vitality & Its Benefits

The New Product Vitality Index (NPVI) is a key performance indicator (KPI) measuring a company’s ability to launch new products. It is calculated as New Product Revenue / All Product Revenue over a specific period (such as 5 years). A higher NPVI indicates a stronger flow of successful new products.

The Problem: Many manufacturers struggle to measure innovation’s business impact, which can lead to poor investment decisions and difficulty aligning teams.

A target NPVI provides a clear goal for the entire organization, guiding R&D decisions and helping teams prioritize projects. This metric highlights the need to invest in people, processes, and capital to achieve growth goals. The NPVI isn’t just about launching new products; it’s about ensuring their market success, leading to tangible revenue.

aPriori’s digital manufacturing platform directly addresses the root causes of design churn, helping to improve the factors that contribute to a high NPVI. A higher NPVI signifies that a greater proportion of a company’s revenue is driven by new, innovative products, demonstrating relevance and growth, and ensuring a competitive advantage and the ability to meet customer needs.

aPriori: Your Solution to Design Churn

aPriori’s platform provides a powerful, data-driven roadmap to mitigating this problem by embedding valuable insights directly into the design process. Engineers get the tools to make informed decisions before a single part is ever manufactured.

Early Knowledge and Guidance

Historically, engineers have designed products without real-time feedback on key factors like profitability, manufacturability, and sustainability. They’d complete a design, only for it to be sent to manufacturing, where issues would be discovered, forcing them back to the drawing board. This back-and-forth is the essence of design churn.

aPriori breaks this cycle by providing a digital twin of the manufacturing process. aPriori’s platform analyzes a 3D CAD model as it’s being designed, offering immediate feedback on:

• Profitability: What will this product actually cost to make? aPriori provides a “should cost” estimate based on the materials, manufacturing processes, and location. This allows engineers to see the cost implications of their design choices in real time, steering them toward the most cost-effective solution from the start. It also gives procurement teams a strong negotiation position and ensures designs are aligned with target costs from the beginning. Moreover, it can be a key driver in determining that product’s pricing.
• Manufacturability: Can this part be made easily and efficiently? The digital twin technology automatically identifies design-for-manufacturability (DFM) issues, such as complex geometries, thin walls, sharp corners, or product features that require complicated tooling. By catching these problems early, engineers can adjust their design, avoiding costly and time-consuming rework down the line. Furthermore, aPriori enables manufacturers to more efficiently fine-tune and optimize designs and add new features.
• Sustainability: What is this product’s environmental impact? aPriori integrates sustainability by providing an estimated carbon footprint based on the design and manufacturing choices. This empowers engineers to make greener decisions without sacrificing performance or cost.

Finally, aPriori provides a single source of truth for product cost and manufacturability. It enables designers, engineers, and sourcing teams to collaborate effectively from the start, reducing the need for multiple design iterations and extensive manual reviews.

The Power of “Designing Right the First Time”

By providing this early knowledge, aPriori allows engineers to:

1. Reduce Rework: They spend less time in the “redesign” phase and more time on genuine innovation. This directly reduces the design’s high churn rate, freeing up valuable resources.
2. Accelerate Time to Market: With fewer design iterations, the entire product development cycle shortens, allowing companies to get new, high-margin products to market faster than their competitors.
3. Boost Product Vitality: When engineers are focused on new products, the company’s portfolio remains fresh and innovative, driving revenue and market share. The ultimate goal is to launch new, exciting products that contribute significantly to the bottom line.
4. Defining Innovation Metrics: The data provided by aPriori—on cost, manufacturability, and design efficiency—serves as a clear, objective metric for R&D teams to evaluate and advance or “kill” new product ideas, ensuring resources are focused on the most viable projects.
5. Investing in R&D: By providing early visibility into the financial viability of new products, aPriori helps product managers make a compelling case for R&D investment, demonstrating potential revenue streams and ROI.
6. Motivating Employees & Fostering Customer Loyalty: When employees have the right tools to bring their innovative ideas to market faster and with fewer hurdles, it creates a more engaging environment. The consistent delivery of new, high-quality products to market builds customer loyalty and trust.

Finally, aPriori’s solution facilitates designers’ onboarding process and allows engineers to create product enhancements more efficiently without impeding time to market or resulting in a higher churn rate. It also helps improve the lifetime value of a product.

The latter two can also help reduce customer churn and improve customer satisfaction. By introducing new and innovative products to the market quickly, you not only retain customers more effectively but also attract new customers.

Eliminating Design Churn and Transforming Innovation

aPriori transforms the design process from a reactive cycle of fixing problems into a proactive engine for innovation. It’s not just about saving money and improving profitability. It’s about giving your engineers the freedom to do what they do best: create and develop the products of tomorrow.