Product Design & Development Services for Established Companies

The Established Company Design & Development Process

Our Approach

Innovation is a challenging task.

Innovating faster and more efficiently than your competition can put enormous strain on your team, and can drain resources away from core product lines. Leading companies drive 50% of their revenue from new products. So, the pressure to innovate is extremely high, but the cost of not innovating is even higher.

Slingshot's unique, start-up approach to innovation works to incrementally reduce your financial risk while maximizing your return on innovation.

We focus our strategy on providing you the exact level of development your team needs to make good decisions. Additionally, like Start-Ups, we engage only in projects for which we have passion and creative energy, ensuring that everyone involved is invested in the success of your program.

Partnering with Slingshot will increase your opportunities for growth, while minimizing your risk.

Innovate Like a Start-Up

Start-Ups and New Ventures must act efficiently to succeed. Slingshot applies a similar strategy to our product development programs.

Limited Resources Require Efficiency
Appropriate Amount of Development to make Major Decisions
Must Pursue an Agile, Self Correcting Development Strategy

The second key element of successful Start-Ups is energy and enthusiasm for the project.

Passion about the Idea
Personal Stake in Project Success
Freedom to be Flexible

First, we identify your target market and explore an exhaustive area of product space around this target. This is an interactive component of Slingshot's process, in which we work with your team to push into new creative space and challenge any assumptions associated with the product category. In this phase, we map and forecast many possibilities, and conclude with recommendations to help you through the decision-making process.

Evolve

Once we have a several great ideas on the table, it's time to explore deeper. In this phase, Slingshot evaluates the concepts against various criteria, we merge, build, and evolve concepts, and we engage in an exploration of the manufacturability and useability of each idea. Concepts emerge from this stage as more refined and complete solutions, each with a clear path to production.

Decide

Now that we've made decisions and narrowed the field of solutions, we need to communicate the leading options clearly and completely. This will enable your management team, your suppliers, and your focus groups to make better decisions and provide you with more meaningful information. Concept solutions that survive this stage are viable and complete, with clear paths to production and commercialization.
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Design Refinement

Design doesn't end with concept selection. Slingshot's industrial design team remain involved throughout the process to ensure that the consumer's needs are met, and that customers will have a great experience when using your product.

Color and Finish Analysis and Selection
Form Study and Refinement
User Interface Development
Ergonomic Optimization
Design Detailing
Experience Design
Photo Realistic Renderings
Animations

Prototyping

Slingshot's skilled model making and prototyping staff can support you at many stages of the product development process. We can provide anything from simple foam models to sophisticated 'looks-like', 'works-like' functional appearance models.

Proof of Concept Prototypes
Functional Bread Board Prototypes
Aesthetic Appearance Models
Functional Appearance Models
Models for Trade Shows
Models for Focus Groups

Engineering

Slingshot's engineering staff are experts at putting products together. We've developed products to withstand the most grueling environmental conditions, we've created complex mechanisms with several dozen moving parts, and we've optimized products to remove every unnecessary cent from the manufacturing cost.

Design for Manufacture
DFMEA
CAD Modeling (PRO-E and Solidworks)
Critical Design Reviews
Cost and Function Optimization
Engineering Documentation
Material Selection
Finite Element Analysis

Manufacturer Relations

We work with qualified manufacturers, yours or ours, that provide estimates of tooling capital and production costs so that you can fully evaluate your project from a return-on- investment standpoint.

Slingshot has worked with dozens of manufacturers globally on programs including injection molded plastics, blow-molded plastics, thermoforming, sheet metal, die casting, extrusion, and dozens of other manufacturing processes and secondary operations. We have found that a thorough and professional "Request for Quote" package makes it easier to engage and qualify manufacturers. We either supply the package to your team or we work directly with contract manufacturers to meet your business needs.

Furthermore, on commodity products produced in Asia, Slingshot has developed an approach to development release called "Design for Asia" (DFA). In this method, we take the prototype and design process only up to the point where the engineering direction is clearly set but the final engineering details are executed by an Asian manufacturer. By balancing our design process for these types of programs, we are able to save you significant development costs, while maintaining control of your development program.
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Product Launch Support

Slingshot can support you in many ways as you prepare for launch. We have experience with preparing for FDA audits for medical devices, with preparing material for use in focus groups, and a variety of other product launch tasks.

Product Testing Support
Package Design and Development
Focus Group Support
FDA Audit Support
Industry Audit Support
FDA Documentation