How to Take a Prototype to Production with Mike Wilkinson

So Mike, what's the process for determining when a prototype is actually ready for production. Very good question and often misunderstood. So prototypes are just that. They are a first run look what your product is gonna be, but they can't be really your production product until several things have occurred. Number one, we've got to get it out in the market and have some alphan beta cuss who can review the product, use the product, and get some field time to make sure it works exactly the way the customer wants it to work, not just the way it was designed. So design might be correct, but it turns out that customers have a different use case for how they wanna than was original. Number two, it's got to be made to be manufacturable, so we call it DFM designed for manufactibility. So it should have been in the initial design we need to make sure you met all that. And third, we gotta get regulatory approval. So if this is a IoT device, for example, we're gonna need UL approval, FCC approval, cellular is gonna require PTCRB. We gotta get approval by the carrier. It's a lot of approvals to make a wireless product be safe and get into the marketplace and be accepted by the carriers. So many aspects have to be included. How long can that process take or does it vary depending on the product? It varies up among the product and varies about how many things are being pushed through. So you can imagine if there's a whole bunch of new IoT devices being pushed through AT and T or Verizon for example. They can't test them all at once, and so they you may get put in line. It could be six months waiting. Right now, it's not too bad. Paragon's lucky enough to have be able to do self certification now on AT and T and Verizon in our office. And so that's a big plus, so we can do it real time in our office for cat m one radios. That's fantastic. I think one of the things that you mentioned that really stood out to me was just that idea that sometimes consumers use products differently than maybe they were intended to be used but are just looking for something that satisfies and and meets that need perhaps. And so I think that's a pretty crucial element to this. It is. I mean, think about Android phone and an iPhone, both do the same thing. Fundamentally, both do email, text, video, etcetera. But one has a different user interface, a different feel, Some users are more attracted to the iPhone, some are more attracted to the Android. It's not a right or wrong answer, but it's if you're trying to make a product you need to identify your market, and then have a product that meets that with the right use case.