Scaling production can often be a challenging job especially for a start-up developing a new product that has never been built before. So when businesses are faced with fulfilling urgent orders or sudden increases in demand it forces them to scale up production. If their production processes aren’t ready or robust enough it can lead to lower production yields and other quality issues.

So how can start-ups and businesses make their production and other business critical processes scalable? One way is to use the law of 10x. This means that you for each subsequent build you increase the qty by 10 times. It all starts with a single prototype.

First prototype – 0 to 1

A start-up will often start by building a single prototype of their idea. This is often the single most important milestone for an early stage start-up. This prototype takes their product count from zero to 1. The prototype will be used to showcase the product and its features to prospective customers and investors. Turning an idea into a tangible and physical product that can either represents or demonstrate the technology in action.

More prototypes – 1 to 10

Typically one prototype is never enough. Especially if it works well. The sales team will want more prototypes so they can show to other prospective customers and investors and thereby drive more commercial interest in the product. The engineers will want more prototypes to test and develop the technology. The next production milestone for the business is to now build more prototypes.

The immediate question is can they follow the same process they used to build one? Probably not. There will be many factors that limit the production quantity such as components, enclosures, circuit boards, displays and so on. This step from 1 to 10 is big enough to find out where the main constraints are such as assembly, sourcing and testing. Its also likely that trying to make more than 10 prototypes gets expensive and time consuming. At this point if you need more units it’s time to shift gears again.

Engineering or development units – 10 to 100

The next step from 10 to 100 is perhaps the biggest challenge for any product development team. Whilst it’s possible to hand build 10 devices with a lot of manual work building a 100 often requires major changes to the prototype design to make it into a product that can be tested and evaluated. This means reviewing the fundamental design of the product and looking at how all the parts are manufactured and put together. This process is called DFMA or Design for Manufacture and Assembly and is a critical part of making any product.

At this stage it’s also common to give the build a different name such as engineering or development units. This helps differentiate it from the hand-built prototypes. After the design for manufacture reviews these devices may look completely different to the prototypes. This is normal as often the design details, feedback from customers and spec changes can radically change the product.

Building a 100 devices will also require larger quantities of parts, specialist tooling and jigs and test fixtures. These tools may include things like injection mold tooling for plastic housings or metal stamping tools for formed parts. With this quantity of parts it can be difficult to track all the units so basic labelling and device serialisation are needed for traceability. This is also the stage where minor mistakes can turn into major headaches. Reworking 10 devices is a pain but doable. Reworking 100 devices is a massive effort!

Pre-production units – 100 to 1,000

Once the 100 devices have been built and the build process reviewed and analysed for further process improvements the next build will be a 1000. This stage is now about scaling up the production equipment and capabilities used to build a 100 and gear them up ready for production volume. Often this build is called pre-production.

At this stage dedicated production assembly and test fixtures are installed to increase throughput and ensure the product is thoroughly tested before it’s completed. You need to make sure that you have sufficient capacity in place to meet the sales demand. Often you’ll find dozens of snags and ideas on how to tweak and optimise the build process. No stone should be left unturned. Minor process improvements can lead to massive yield improvements further downstream.

Mass production – 1,000 to 10,000+

The final test of scaling any production build is to then launch into mass production. This is both exciting and terrifying in equal measures. The exact quantity of this may change enormously depending on the customer demand. However, the principle is the same. What changes do we need to make to our process that we learned from building a 1000 units that will then enable us to scale efficiently and build 10,000 units?

You may well find yourself in the weeds in particular aspects of the process of sub-processes that until now hadn’t gotten much attention. Making changes at this stage typically requires some type of monitoring to make sure that the overall process capability isn’t affected and that you’ve got hard data to prove that changes are making a positive difference. The main focus here is often about reducing process times and increasing throughput.

Build plan example

Summary

The law of 10x provides a good progressive framework for a start-up involved in making hardware. Like any framework, it can easily be adapted around your specific idea and product. Some companies for example may need to iterate more on the prototypes to find their product market fit. Other businesses may not need to build as many devices. The key thing is that the build plan is a progression and each successive build pushes the business towards the goal of delivering a valuable product for their customers.