Expanding technology ecosystems is more important than ever to drive a growing economy and to work on solving world problems that can help drive change. It is important to foster the growth of new technologies that are coming out of academic institutions, national labs, and startups. For the US to continue to stay relevant and progress forward, its essential that we invest in innovation. The specific area that we are focused on in the innovation cycle is prototyping/design for manufacturing and manufacturing feasibility.
Design for manufacturing is when a technology is evaluated in the eye and mind of manufacturers. The technology may be developed in the lab and have the technology readiness (technology has been tested and is sound) but may not have any manufacturing readiness potential (capability of being made in manufacturing processes). Design for manufacturing takes the concept, breaks down the design and adjusts it to have the potential to be manufactured on a larger scale. For example, a team came to us with a complicated diagnostic test kit, and our team worked on keeping the integrity of the critical aspects of the technology, but eliminated complicated designs, extra processing steps, and helped direct to cheaper materials that would all achieve the intent of the technology. Their original design would have never made it to commercial due to costs. With these changes, the technology now becomes more enticing for investors or others to work on. This is the advantage of having manufacturing know how early in the design concept.
Below is the lean start- up methodology, which pushes startups to obtain voice of the customer information rapidly, which is half the battle! In the build phase, this is where design for manufacturing and feasibility should begin. This is an iterative process, but having manufactures involved early on, even in a consulting fashion can help drive the innovation in a direction faster.
The FLEXcon team has been proud to have worked on a plethora of new technology innovations for over 65 years, and we feel so passionately about manufacturing and innovation that we would like to propose a different way of investing in new technology. This would specifically focus on manufacturing design and feasibility for scale. Technologies with a high readiness (proven) can enter this federally funded manufacturing accelerator that not only consults for the startups but is invested in these technologies to bring to market. We believe this will be a different way of investing in technologies and bringing them through the innovation cycle at a rapid rate.
The manufacturing accelerator should be open to new technologies that need to be manufactured, not segmented out by market. This will allow for crossover of manufacturing processes that occur so frequently. For example, FLEXcon plays in life sciences and clean tech (among many other markets). It also allows for those technologies that are enabling to find a home easier.
