Product Development Services

Product Development Services bound by common sense wisdom from 30 plus years of real world experience. With over 200 designs resulting in hundreds of millions is sales for our clients. Unlike our much larger competitors Vorelco is a lean mean product development machine capable of delivering new products in record time at a price that few can touch.

As a small design firm all our clients are important, large or small, fortune 500 or startup, and when you need help you are going to get it pronto. Whether you need just a little help or a lot, we are here to make sure your new product design exceeds your expectations and requirements.

Product Development is a multistage process beginning with careful analysis and planning. A seasoned product development firm will invest enough time to thoroughly understand the product or process definition or specification and the entire scope of the product development project from start to finish.

There is always a chance of a surprise or a discovery of a missed opportunity but these anomalies should be the exception and not the rule.

As part of the early product development planning process every element of the product and its target market should be studied. Although the typical client has a pretty good understanding of his target market and end user, it is the duty of the product development firm to know as much as possible about the existing market and trends that if missed could render the client’s product obsolete before it hits the store shelf.

Some might see this approach as exceeding the scope of work requested by the client. Vorelco looks at this practice as absolutely essential in assuring the best possible product design outcome.

We never question the client’s ability to adequately define his or her target user but we do often offer as supplement information, any knowledge that can contribute to a better product design outcome.

Case in point, Vorelco was awarded a project back in 2004 that began as a knock off design. The NDA has long since expired and two resulting patents that we wrote for the client have since been awarded or pending. In other words the example I am about to use is 100% non-proprietary.

The client just wanted to knock off an existing un-patented product. The competitor product was a conventional multi-axis vehicle roof top mounted satellite dish pointing system.

This device revealed very primitive engineering practices or what we call “Barnyard engineering”. This is where someone with a rudimentary understanding of engineering uses hit and miss, hope for best, trial and error design that results in a product that works just well enough to open the door for a superior competitor.

Although Vorelco was well versed in R.F. and satellite technology we were new to automated robotic based mounts. We reverse engineered the competitor product and noted its design shortcomings and missed opportunities. This system basically provided a steerable multi-axis satellite dish mount that upon deployment, erect from a low profile stowed position to a skyward pointing antenna. Upon full deployment the competitor product would execute a search pattern looking for the appropriate satellite.

This process was aided by on board sensors like GPS, accelerometers, and digital compassing. Once the intended satellite was located, the antenna mount locked onto the target bird. With all the features this system possessed it was plagued by one easily solvable design shortcoming.

The X axis (Horizontal rotation) portion of the pointer contained the LNB and control cables inside a turntable like mount limiting rotation to the length of the internal cable bundle! In other words what prevented this technology from limitless or continuous rotation was a simple readily available, low cost, multi-conductor slip ring!

Now herein lies the dilemma. As a product developer hired just to execute a simple design agreement that called for a knock off of an existing product, do we just ignore the findings and stay on task and just overlook this opportunity for the client?

Do we withhold the information and just deliver what was originally agreed to?

No! The client acted in good faith in offering a fair price for a product development endeavor and we, in kind, accepted the work for hire assignment like any other.

The client was entitled to our discovery whether they intended to exploit it or not. Upon disclosing our findings we were able to clearly demonstrate the many advantages to a continuous or limitless rotation satellite dish mount.

Among the obvious advantages were features like no loading or tangling o wire and coaxial cables from the dish to the modem inside the vehicle and the ability to create a WiFi zone directly from the mount allowing multiple users to log in to a secure network anywhere on the road. When I detailed the many military applications for the system there was a palatable excitement in the air.

This prosumer to commercial product concept just jumped the technology barrier and became an unmanned combination local air traffic control system with direct to satellite reporting of enemy aircraft, vehicle and troop movement without risking a single life.

The system could now be kicked out of a C-130 and using parachutes make a landing on air filled pontoon like supports. Then the system could deflate its pontoons and using fuel cell technology could provide short term surveillance.

Now after all this background do you withhold post project launch discoveries and just act according to the scope of the agreement or do you help the client make history?

The moral to this story is if you hire Vorelco for your product development needs you get a lot more than just a job well done you get a product design that reflects a passion for innovation and performance not to mention quality.