Design with a purpose

One of the goals during the enclosure redesign was to support a change happening behind the scenes.

There is absolutely no change to the features, performance, or functionality of the system. The customer experience remains exactly the same.

What did change was the cost and availability of one component.

By reworking part of the design, we reduced the cost of that component from $60 to $20 and cut our replenishment lead time from about 3 weeks to roughly 10 days.

That means:

• Better inventory control
• Faster restocking
• Less dependence on a single supplier
• More stability in pricing

Most customers will never see this part of the process, and that’s fine. The best engineering changes are often the ones nobody notices because everything continues to work exactly as expected.

Sometimes improving a product isn’t about adding more features. Sometimes it’s about making smarter decisions behind the scenes so you can keep delivering the same product without passing unnecessary costs on to the customer.

Business ownership in a nutshell: spend weeks redesigning something so nobody notices anything changed. Then consider that a win.