Design Blitzes and Rapid Prototyping
Turbo Charges Product Development

Situation:

A medical devices company found that product development took too long, and that they got customer feedback too late in the process. As a result, they were only capable of delivering three products per year in a market that needed many more new products.

Actions:

They began conducting Design Blitzes - focused design events with cross-functional teams to develop and evaluate multiple solutions to a technical or customer challenge within just a few days. They supplemented this with strategic use of Rapid Prototyping equipment to build their internal capacity to conduct experiments and evaluate concepts.

Results:

After two years, the company could deliver as many as 15 new products per year, and they have begun to use this capacity to leverage their technology into new markets.