When Outsourcing Electronics Design of Your Product Is a Good Idea?

Outsourcing to fill a resource gap as a business practice is common and widespread in the modern global economy. As the costs of hiring highly qualified technical experts are growing, and finding the right talent gets more and more difficult amid the widening tech talent gap, companies are turning to outsourcing as a way to access niche expertise when they need it. In addition, many product designs only require niche experience and expertise during the product design phase.

It is certainly the case with electronics design and engineering of electronic products. When companies are not able to find an off-the-shelf electronic solution that would meet their needs, outsourcing is the only alternative to designing and engineering the required product in-house. 

The development of an electronic product can pose a number of challenges for a business. Today we are going to discuss some of those challenges. 

Off-The-Shelf vs. Custom Solutions

First, we would like to share our considerations on the issue of choosing between commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and custom solutions for product development. 

• Off-The-Shelf Solutions.

There is a wide selection of ready-made single-board computers (SBCs) from various vendors that supply all the major hardware and software components, such as all the interface boards, operating system, and SDK for application development. The benefits of utilizing off-the-shelf hardware should be rather obvious. It allows you significantly shorten the time required for design and development, getting the product to the market faster, and lowers the cost of early production.

Naturally, this approach also has a handful of downsides to look out for, such as:

• Unpredictable long-term availability. The support of COTS hardware by its provider can be discontinued as well as the newer versions of the same hardware may not be backward compatible and will require reconfiguration and redesign of your product. 

• The COTS solution may not meet all your product requirements. Another major weakness of COTS hardware is that it is designed to be general-purpose and support a range of most popular features. As a result, using COTS may impose limitations and compromises on the design of your product that can only be avoided by utilizing custom hardware. 

• Poor price balance. Another common problem with COTS solutions is that it can inflate the final costs of the product considerably. As a result, it may be feasible for the creation of a product prototype, but not suitable for in-volume production of a final product. 

To sum it up, utilizing COTS hardware could be a reasonable choice if you are developing a product that is required in small volumes and if its technical requirements are general enough to be satisfied with COTS.

• Custom Solutions. 

Custom hardware is required when available COTS solutions don’t meet the product needs in terms of technology, features, design and production costs. As we said earlier, custom solutions are preferred in cases when keeping in-volume production cost low is more important than rapid prototype development and validation. 

Custom hardware can be designed to match the application specific requirements of your product. Many applications have physical dimension, environmental specifications or weight restrictions that cannot be met with a COTS solution. When the product is designed to be produced and sold in high volumes, custom hardware pays off quickly as it will have much lower per unit production cost. 

Firmware Development Uutsourcing

Another aspect of electronic product design is firmware development, which is also a commonly outsourced service as many companies do not have sufficient internal resources or niche expertise. Almost any company designing embedded products needs a team of experienced firmware developers in order to ensure the hardware and software components of the product are integrated in a way to optimize performance and user experience. 

Firmware development is a wide area that includes a number of specialized skills focused on improving the performance of hardware functions, solutions for continuous integration, and enabling innovative technologies such as IoT and M2M computing.

Here are some of the most common services in the firmware development outsourcing domain: 

• Embedded Firmware Programming

• Firmware Testing

• Hardware/Firmware Co-Design

• Firmware Maintenance and Continuous Integration

• Real-Time System Design

• Device Driver and BSP development

Why and When to Outsource Electronics Design? 

Another major consideration is choosing the best architecture and design approach for the desired product. 

Clearly, in some cases, in-house development is a feasible solution, as it allows a company to have better control over the design. What’s more important, in-house development is only an option for those companies that can afford it and have the right resources available at the right time. 

Consider the following when choosing to outsource design elements of your product. 

1. Lack of in-house Resources and Expertise

The most obvious indicator is when your company simply doesn’t have qualified human staff to deliver such a project. It is often the case, and not just for small companies and startups but also large enterprises as well.

2. Issues During Development Process

If the product development was started in-house but progresses slowly with multiple challenges and delays, it can be another good reason to source external help. 

3. Need for Niche Expertise.

Some companies do have a qualified team to deliver such a project in-house, but end up lacking expertise in a specific technology niche and experience with alternative components and architecture choices that solve the design challenges in a more efficient manner. Outsource electronics design service providers can satisfy this need with their talent. 

4. Cost Control

In-house development also implies higher risks of potential financial losses if the project goes over budget due to delays and complications or ends up a failure. Outsourcing it to a reliable service provider allows business leaders to minimize risks, control costs, and guarantee the successful outcome of the project. The differentiator and value proposition for many companies is their application layer and hardware design team is required only during the initial phase of a product launch, thus it is more cost effective to outsource the hardware design and focus the internal team on the companies’ core product.

Benefits of electronics design outsourcing 

As all the factors listed above are quite common in today’s business environment, outsourcing electronics design is the best choice for many applications. 

There are three common outsourcing models:

• Off-shoring, when the project is outsourced to a company located in another part of the world, far away from the client, with major time and language differences. 

• On-shoring, when the service provider and the client are based in the same country. 

• Nearshoring, when the project is handled by a company located in a nearby country.

Each of these models has its pros and cons, so your choice should be based on specific project requirements, the availability of electronics design providers in your country or nearby, and, of course, costs. 

Regardless of the model you choose, here are the main benefits of outsourcing electronic product design as opposed to doing it in-house. 

1. The ability to focus on delivering the best software and apps

Outsourcing electronics design allows businesses to focus on the core aspects of their products, such as applications and other aspects of the application software. It is not untypical for companies willing to implement the latest hardware technologies to suffer from the lack of skillset when it comes to firmware and hardware development. In these circumstances, hiring an outsourcing electronics design firm that has hardware and firmware experience with selected component base is the only way to deliver the product without delays and/or board re-spins. 

2. Best Utilization of Hardware Capabilities

Many COTS vendors do not implement all the features supported by the hardware, creating additional difficulties when utilizing the device in an application. It can be tricky to select the best components that would enable desired application results and maximize efficiency while also meeting timeline and product release targets. Electronics design outsourcing can be a solution to this problem. 

3. Focused Expertise

Outsourcing electronics design allows you to make sure that the team working on the project has extensive expertise in this particular domain, thus avoiding potential mistakes and complications if the project is handled by inexperienced engineers. 

4. Reduced Costs

Clearly, reducing project costs is always a core objective of outsourcing. Hiring a third-party service provider to deliver an electronic product design is typically cheaper compared to in-house development costs, considering all the expenses involved. 

5. Increased Resources

For companies that clearly lack the resources for streamlined product engineering process, outsourcing is the way to make sure the project is developed and tested to match high quality standards and modern manufacturing practices.

6. Predictable Outcome

Finally, choosing a reputable electronics design firm with proven experience of successfully delivering product design projects is a way to minimize risks of delays and complications. Outsourcing allows business leaders to protect their companies from potential project-related losses while also minimizing the costs of development. 

Summary 

Electronic product development is a complex process, and if you decide to outsource it, choosing the right outsourcing partner becomes essential. You want a partner who can offer high level of expertise in designing and engineering of electronic products, a well-diversified team of technology specialists and rapid development cycles.

The Tauro Technologies’ team of embedded hardware and firmware engineers has a proven track record of successfully designing custom hardware for various applications in multiple technology domains.

Interested to know more? Get in touch with us for details.