Is your new product development stuck? You're not alone.

You have a new product.

Commerce needs to get it to market as soon as possible.

Manufacturing is already planning capacity.

Management is asking about deadlines.

But reality is often different.

Engineers are simultaneously dealing with daily operations, complaints, and production support.

There's less time left for the new project than would be needed.

At first, it's just a minor delay.

A week.

Two weeks.

A month.

And suddenly it becomes clear that the original deadline is no longer realistic.

When development isn't the main problem

In most companies, the problem isn't a lack of capable people.

• The problem is capacity.

• The people who need to move the project forward are often the same ones the daily operations can't function without.

• The result is a familiar situation:

• the project is handled in pieces

• priorities constantly change

• decisions are postponed

• deadlines slip

No one is doing anything wrong.

There's just not enough space to focus fully on development.

The product works. Manufacturing less so

We see another situation often. The development team creates a technically functional solution. The prototype works. Tests go well.

But only when preparing for production do questions arise:

• How much will it cost to manufacture one unit?

• How complex will assembly be?

• Can some parts be simplified?

• How easily can production be scaled?

The later these questions are raised, the more expensive the changes tend to be.That's why it pays to think about manufacturing during development.

Missing experience with specific technology

Modern development today involves much more than design. Materials, manufacturing technologies, prototyping, testing, automation, cost optimization. Few companies have specialists in all areas.

This often leads to:

• the product works,

• but manufacturing is unnecessarily expensive,

• assembly is complex,

• or the product is difficult to transition to mass production

When does an external partner start to make sense

Not when the internal team fails.

But when it needs to be strengthened.

Typically at a moment when:

• development needs to be accelerated,

• specific know-how is missing,

• the internal team is occupied with operations,

• the product needs to go from design to production

The external team doesn't have to take over the entire project. Often it helps precisely in the area that slows the company down the most.

How we approach this at Holymer

We don't enter a project as an external supplier working separately from the customer.

We collaborate with the internal team and get involved where we can bring the greatest value.

Sometimes it's about design.

Other times about equipment development, prototyping, production preparation, or automation.

The goal isn't to create a solution that looks good on a drawing.

The goal is to create a solution that works in real production.

The biggest savings often don't come from development

The biggest savings often come from the company avoiding months of delays, repeated modifications, and problems when introducing production. And that's precisely why a properly balanced combination of internal capacity and external expertise makes so much sense.

In the next post, we'll describe Holymer's specific approach to external collaboration in more detail.