IDC Shares Best Practice at Solid Solutions Experience Day

IDC’s Projects Director, Brian Gough, was the guest speaker at the Solid Solutions Experience Day in Farnborough this week. His talk was well received by the audience of more than fifty industry members attending. Brian gave a humorous and highly instructive insight into the creation and implementation of IDC’s detailed product development process, honed over IDC’s 40 year history.

Sharing his experience spanning over 30 years at IDC, and drawing on client case studies to illustrate how briefs are met and challenges overcome, Brian took the audience on a whistle-stop journey which considered how things were done in technology-free days through to the advent of CAD, explaining how this has impacted the evolution of IDC's own design and development process.

The presentation looked at client product designs from a spectrum of industries, from medical to industrial, consumer and scientific. Each considered a different set of issues caused for a number of reasons, from change control at delivery stage to tight timescales and speed to market. The development of an award-winning laryngoscope for Venner, showed how a new design came about through highly detailed exploration, adding value through a new, patented, difficult airway blade and ergonomic shape to improve ease of use. Another example came in the form of a life-saving motorcycle helmet which demanded a clever combination of specialist materials and design to mimic the protective layer of the skin and scalp, dramatically reducing rotational head injury which commonly causes severe trauma.

“Our founder, Mike Woodhall, was a visionary in many ways,” explains Brian Gough. “When CAD first arrived on the design scene the systems had many limitations. Mike encouraged us to move beyond those limitations. We found ways to do that and this has always been our approach within the company.

The development process is about four key phases: Explore, Create, Define and Deliver; it is about delving into the very finest detail in each phase before passing through the phase gates. It’s this that helps deliver an inspired and innovative product design in the end. Achieving a process like that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to refine but it’s the reason that over 92% of IDC’s work goes on to commercial success.”