With our 20+ years of experience in the audio industry, we can provide sparring and insights across multiple segments of the audio industry. What market segments and product categories are experiencing the most attractive growth, and what are the trends?

With a deep understanding of the market, we can help provide input, suggestions, and sparring regarding product definition and features, thus helping create the product specifications. Based on our broad range of existing technology platforms, we provide advice and suggestions in architecting your product and selecting the optimal platforms. This also includes preparing accurate cost estimations based on actual BOMs.

Once specifications are locked-in and we have official project kick-off, we will assign a development team and project manager to execute your project. This includes schematic design, layout, mechanical design, software development, etc. Over the years, we have honed our skills and tools in designing for cost, achieving the required performance and features at the lowest possible cost. We know well how to design for reliability and quality, designing with proper component de-rating and margins as well as including monitoring and protection systems of critical parameters such as temperatures, current, voltage, etc. 

Once we receive the first prototypes, we spend significant efforts on verifying performance, functionality, and reliability. Our long experience in the audio industry means we know the use cases and stress products experience in the real world. This knowledge is built into the test and validation plans, ensuring we test for all the tough use case scenarios we know can cause trouble in the real world. Our testing also extends to compliance testing for safety and EMC, obtaining the required certificates. Our NPI team takes care of managing prototype builds, sourcing parts for mass production ramp up as well as creating mass production tester fixtures. We have developed our own advanced, standardized functional tester bases. This makes it a quick and relatively low-cost process to create individual test fixtures and test software for each specific product and PCBA. 

Once released for mass production, our operations team will manage all supply chain aspects throughout the lifetime of the product. This includes forecasting, production planning, managing critical and unique components and suppliers, dealing with deviations, optimizing yields as well as ongoing price negotiations with suppliers. 

Many of the products we provide to our customers have expected product life cycles of 10+ years. During this period, it often happens that components go End-Of-Life or become hard to source. It also happens that new safety and EMC standards are introduced. In such cases, we re-design and qualify alternative parts. We also monitor field failure rates and perform RMA analysis, taking corrective actions if issues are detected.

When the product nears its end of life, we work closely with your sourcing or product management team to manage the ramp-down process to minimize excess inventory and component liabilities.