- Is your complete functional product spec done?
- Are your Bill of Materials and Cost of Goods Sold estimates
complete?
- Have you passed all verification tests and gotten approved for
production?
- Can you optimize the design to use more common components?
- Have you taken care of tooling, fixtures design and
verifications?
- What kind of inventory profiles do you need to maintain?
- Are you 100% sure you have the green light from your Contract
Manufacturing partner? Even though this step should have been
covered in the final prototype phase, this is the time to check it
again - is the product manufacturable (DFx)? Find out sooner than
later.
- China vs. Local. My personal preference is to start locally and
scale in China later.
- Be realistic about your volumes so your CM doesn't drop you
when you never hit the 5 million units per year target.
- Regularly test and validate your product at the factory.
Gary Rayner who founded LifeProof lived in
Taiwan and China for a total of 6 months during the early
production months of his juggernaut product.
- You don't need to be best friends with your CM leadership. But
you need to like them, be able to clearly communicate with them and
build trust. Road trip baby.