Is your company trying to determine if the time is right to move forward with your product development? If so, you’re not alone. Preparing to launch a project is challenging under the best of circumstances, and the events of 2020 continue to complicate matters. Dramatic economic and social changes have impacted supply chain security, technological trends, consumer behavior, and have resulted in significant market volatility. Company leaders now clearly understand two things. First, they are facing a new era of risk. Second, they are facing a new era of opportunity. Between the need to play it safe and act boldly, many leaders can feel deadlocked between these opposing positions.
At Pivot International, we believe that strategic risk reduction (“playing it safe”) and acting boldly are equally important. These positions aren’t opposing — they’re complimentary. Businesses really can “have it both ways,” and it’s our job to make this possible. For nearly fifty years, we’ve helped companies worldwide successfully navigate crisis, disruption, and market volatility while also driving growth. With innovation expertise that spans fourteen industries and 320,000 square feet of manufacturing space across three continents, we provide companies with the resources to move confidently forward with their product development.
The most successful risk reduction strategies serve to advance your product development by helping you play both good defense and good offense. Here are four that do both.
Alternative Sourcing Solutions
Companies continue to struggle with record-breaking supply chain disruptions and shortages. This means that one of the top risks that companies need to address is supply chain security. You know the saying: you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Unless you can cost-effectively procure the “eggs” (materials, parts, and components) for making your “omelet” (your new product), all bets are off. At Pivot, our highly diversified global supply chain network and alternative sourcing solutions help companies play offense by defying disruption.
2. Integrative Expertise
Product development undertaken in a piecemeal fashion is always risky. When product design, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution are farmed out to separate partners, the result is too often communication issues, oversights, missed opportunities, and costly breakdowns and delays. But by integrating design, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution under a single company umbrella, there’s virtually no risk of the “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.” When you work with a one-source partner like Pivot, you can be assured of exceptional levels of coordination, collaboration, and a transparent approach that generates a decidedly offensive play: a smooth, seamless process, the creation of a superior product, and expedited time-to-market.
3. Design for Manufacture (DFM)
DFM might be one of the best-kept secrets regarding risk reduction strategies that also confer powerful offensive benefits. DFM, precisely as the name suggests, ensures that design is never undertaken separately from manufacturing considerations. This ensures your product design doesn’t turn out to be too costly to manufacture at scale. (As hard as it may be to believe, this happens more often than you’d think.) DFM goes beyond optimizing design for manufacture by driving innovation. At Pivot, we like to say that DFM exerts “downward adaptive pressures” that force designers to think outside the box. This leaves them no choice but to devise product solutions that are not only supply chain and manufacturing friendly but also innovative.
4. Scalable Manufacturing
Inventory shortages and inventory excesses represent two versions of the same costly problem. To safeguard against this risk while mounting a strong offense, companies need a partner with scalable manufacturing to help them rapidly respond to fluctuations in market demand. At Pivot, our company-owned manufacturing facilities let you flexibly choose between large and small lot sizes. Thanks to our investment in mirror-mounted twinned SMT, you can even “toggle” between locations to optimize your distribution costs.
Risk reduction strategies that double as effective offensive strategies for seizing market opportunities are a win-win way forward. These strategies can end the false dichotomy between playing it safe and acting boldly by functioning defensively to protect your company from unnecessary risk while advancing your product development. If you’re ready to begin or resume your product development, Pivot delivers the proven experience and industry-leading track record to help make your product vision a successful reality. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your company’s growth!
