Element Product Design

Providing boutique design and engineering consulting services to help companies and individuals develop unique, intelligent products.

Founded in 2005. Our team works from concept through to production, including all mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial design and design for manufacturing as required. Since 2012, our specialty has been taking existing customer designs and optimizing them for manufacturing. This includes part reduction, part simplification, assembly process optimization, and all the other hallmarks of good design for manufacturing. We’d be happy to walk you through a couple of cases to explain what we were able to accomplish.

Our studio is in San Francisco, where we have the privilege of working with a variety of stellar mechanical and electrical engineers, all very seasoned and top-notch. We generally prefer to work in physical proximity with our clients at least part-time to speed the flow of information/decisions. At this point, we’ve designed tens of successful products and hundreds of parts for those products.

Engineering & Design:

• Mechanical Engineering
• Electrical Engineering, including Schematic and Layout
• Firmware and Embedded Systems Engineering
• Industrial Design
• Computer Aided Design (CAD), including Complex 3D Surfacing
• Detailed Part Design for both Prototype and Production
• Tolerance Analysis
• Thermal Simulation and Analysis
• Mechanism Design
• Specification and Sourcing for Off-The-Shelf (OTS) Parts
• Integration of Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Best Practices
• Integration of Design for Assembly (DFA) Best Practices
• Documentation, including Drawings, Part Files and Specifications
• Design, Sourcing and Assembly of Prototypes as needed for Concept Validation
• Testing and Validation of Prototype and Production Units
• Review of Existing Products for Design or Functionality Improvements

Product Development:

• Creation or Refinement of the Product Requirements Document (PRD)
• Conceptual Design Generation and Exploration
• Exploration for the Primary Product Architecture and Production Processes
• Investigation of Technology Applicability
• Survey Existing Competitive Products
• Creation of a Realistic Development Schedule
• Product Bill of Materials and COGS
• Development of the Product Testing Plan
• Support for Initial Manufacturing

Manufacturing Support:

• Manufacturer Identification & Qualification
• Manufacturing Tool Review
• Domestic and Off-Shore Manufacturing Support
• Review of First Article Parts and Inspection Reports
• Support for EVT/DVT/PVT Builds
• Creation and/or Review of Assembly Work Instructions
• Development of Test Fixtures
• Development of Assembly Fixtures
• Development of Calibration Fixtures
• Sourcing for Third-Party Logistics Vendors

Other Services:

• Regulatory Compliance
• Product Safety Testing & Certification
• Product 3D Scanning
• Optical Engineering
• Antenna Design
• Packaging Design
• Branding and Graphic Design