How we're working

Our team performs three main activities:

We practice two main approaches to solving technical issues - traditional staged and agile. Preliminary analysis allows you to select the appropriate methodology.

The choice of the method directly affects the time and cost of solving the problem. In general, the choice of a particular approach is determined by taking into account the following:

In most cases, if we are talking about designing, the method of the stage upward designing is applied - from "particular" to "aggregate".

Project management¹ (if a preliminary analysis indicates expediency) on the basis of an agile approach, it makes it possible to minimize the costs of forced adjustments after the completion of the next stage of work. Such a method is effective in solving problems with an unclearly formulated subject area or in cases when a technical requirements are formed and supplemented in the course of a solution.

Phases

All works are performed in accordance with the requirements of industry standards. Some phases can be omitted or merged, but in most cases it is:

Concept / Discovery

Initial phase where the idea for the new product is generated and documented.

Analysis of idea for development of the clear specification. This process can range from a short phone call for a simple design to a couple of weeks of talks, if the design is complicated or requires a lot of details. At the end of this phase a proposal to the customer for the preliminary phase and estimates for the other phases of project will be delivered.

Preliminary Design

Creating a preliminary design, based on the specifications agreed upon in the discovery phase. Developping engineering model and performing any other task that is necessary to flush out the product before detailing and creating engineering drawings and documents.

At the end of this phase the work is summarized and delivered to the customer at a Preliminary Design Review (PDR). Also the proposal and give firm costs for the next phase before proceeding will be updated.

Critical Design

Detailing the design and creating engineering drawings and documents of the design presented at the Preliminary Design Review. The changes or modifications to the design requested by the customer at the PDR are also incorporated before drawings are made.

At the end of this phase the work is summarized and delivered to the customer at a Critical Design Review (CDR). Also the proposal and give firm costs for the next phase before proceeding will be updated.

Build

In this phase, all the parts for the assembly are ordered, received and the product is assembled. Any nonperformance in the assembly process are eliminated. Also in this phase, the initial manufacturing procedures are worked out and any necessary manufacturing documentation is created.

At the end of this phase, fully built prototypes would be delivered to the customer.

Testing

Tests vary tremendously on the type of product and level of quality the customer wants to achieve. The customer usually want to be intimately involved in the testing to see for himself how well the product works. The amount of testing is most often limited by time and budget constraints.

Release Build

Often the product development cycle is repeated several times mainly to fix problems that were discovered in testing. The goal is usually to create a prototypes that are as close to release as possible and perform some final testing before a full product launch.

The release build phase is usually just to envolve full conformance of the design to the requirements as production is started.

CAD/CAM/CAE

Modern engineering technologies allow multi-level integration of CAD/CAM/CAE tools into the project. In a case of collaboration with your team, we support the following products: