Electronic Design Consoltation 4

[Sparkey5774]

I am currently looking after the development of an engineering team in a fairly new medical design and manufacturing company. Included in my responsibilities are complete electrical/electronic design, production and assembly line setup, process and procedure creation, partial mechanical design, fixture design, standard compliances, and the list goes on and on as one could well imagine. Given that currently I am basically working as a one person team until we are able to bring some more people in to help out, I am being a little overwellmed with everything due to lack of experience in all of the different fields, and ultimatly a lack of time.

I have been looking for a good consulting firm to either review current design (mainly the electronic parts as I have found some firms that will review the mechanical designs), do full turn-key design, and/or provide design assistance to speed up the problem solving process.

Also, I found the following site,

http://www.mandyservices.com.

I was wondering if anybody had any experience dealing with either this company or a similar company. Even after speaking with representatives of this company, I am having trouble deciding if these types of services would be useful to me at this point in time. If there is anyone that would be able to provide me with some constructive comments, help, or advise that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[itsmoked]

Well I think you are often better served by "trying" to do the job yourself. You just go through the process of building a unit and taking notes, always looking for aspects that will shorten assembly time. You can even run stopwatch timings and see if your ideas work. Keep an open mind in all this. Once we increased a line's throughput by building a plywood jig to hold an individual product as it went thru the assembly line rather than passing the bits and pieces and dangling cables along individually.

Design reviews are always a good idea. They often help a design mechanical, electrical, civil, doesn't matter. Having other people's experienced input can head off expensive mistakes. One problem though is with the reviewers trying to change the design. There are some who insist that their idea is the best and then try to force that on the design instead of admitting that there are multiple ways to achieve things and just confirming that something will work or pointing out possible pitfalls.

If you need to follow some sort of requirement like ISO9000 stuff then renting help can be a big help - bang for the buck.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[CarlPugh]

Medical equipment have their own standards.
Get copies of all medical standards that apply to the product that you intend to manufacture.
Read all the appliciable standards before designing anything.

 

[waross]

Look for an assistant. Review resumes looking for someone who has a solid background in some part of your operation rather than somone who can do a little bit of everything. You can then work towards offloading everything in the individuals area of expertise and forgetting about it. This will not exclude using the person for general assistance as you build your team.
respectfully

 

[Sparkey5774]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into both of these and see where I end up. To be honest I never would have thought to get an assistant who could specialize in a particular area so that I could completly off-load a section of my work load.

Any ideas on how to avoid people reviewing the design from "forcing" their own ideas into the design. I have dealt with these types of people in the past which is why I was hesitant to work with a consulting firm.

 

[LionelHutz]

I don't know that company. Unfortunately, it can be hard to pick out the best person or group for the job - much like hiring can sometimes go wrong. Take time to find a consultant or company you think will fit. Our place was taken for a lot of $$ by one consultant.

Waross has a good idea in that you'll need these people specializing in the different aspects eventually anyways.