SERVICES
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Bringing innovation expertise in design and engineering to address the challenges of planning, transferring and adapting your impact technology.
Technology Needs Assessment
Since 2001, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has developed the framework of Technology Needs Assessments (TNA) to analyze the different needs for technology, especially in developing countries. Based on this framework and previously conducted TNAs, our services include assessing technology needs in the target market.
The process of TNAs consists of three stages, on each of which the Scaletech team has extensive experience:
- Identification and Prioritization of Sectors and Technologies.
- Barrier Analysis and enabling Framework Identification.
- Creation of a Technology Action Plan.
Technology Scouting, Evaluation and Selection
To identify the best solutions for the determined technology needs, we scout technologies and help with the selection as part of our services. One method we use is the marginal abatement curve, which ranks technologies based on cost-efficiency, e.g., per avoided unit of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Drawing on our experience on climate technology and decisions analysis, our services include evaluations of the scalability of cleantech solutions considering complex systems and diverse stakeholder interactions, e.g., for technology competitions where we have served as judges.
Based on these evaluations, we can identify several promising technologies and develop transfer plans for their operations in the target markets.
Technology Development
Getting past the barriers to scale requires a holistic and structured development approach. Scaletech is highly skilled in the planning and execution of product design projects and adheres to methodologies for time and cost-efficient development of technological innovations.
Our services span throughout the entire product development process, offering support from preliminary phases (proof of idea and proof of concept), through support in the development of alpha, beta, and full prototypes all the way to ramping up to production.
A key element in scaling up a technology, whether it is an existing technology or a new one to be developed, is to establish the product or system architecture.
The product architecture integrates the connections between the physical and functional structures of the product. That is, it leverages the identification of which components of the product perform, or are involved in, which functions and how the components are interrelated with each other.
At Scaletech our consultants specialized in design engineering have the competencies to define product architectures and use them as a starting point to perform function-cost analyses in order to establish priorities for scaling. In addition, we deliver rationalization analyses to assess the potential for product modularization.
Whether at the level of conceptual design, embodiment design or detailed design, our engineers are competent to advise you in technical feasibility analysis of your product.
In this context, CAD modeling and analysis to back up the creation of a prototype and proofing that the concept will work as predicted are included.
Also, aiming at the scalability of the product in the new market, we refine the design for mass production appropriate to the selected supply chain; to do so, we work with the design for manufacturability and assembly (DFMA) approach.
For markets that require extreme affordability, alternate business model innovations may be required, e.g., product-service-systems (PSS). PSSs are promising avenues in achieving greater business sustainability in emerging markets and leveraging collaborative consumption in BoP markets.
Scaletech is skilled in configuring service models that are tied to the hardware so they can be developed concurrently. Using methods such as value chain mapping or portfolio analysis we provide you with competent advice to define what type of innovation best fits the vision you have for your company.
Design for Scale Planning
We use an approach called ‘Design for Scale’ developed at MIT, which allows us to explore the specific intented new target market and, by (re)designing cleantech products, meet the customers’ specific needs in a competent, comprehensive, and detailed way.
This approach involves the analysis of five aspects related to barriers or gaps that may affect the technology transfer process:
- The differences in performance that a technology may experience when deployed in different locations, under different environmental conditions, under different working conditions.
- Differences in infrastructure, including both physical and technical infrastructure such as facilities, supply chains and trained workforce.
- Differences that may exist in plans for the development or deployment of a technology in terms of its sustainability over time.
- Differences in cultural practices and preferences of the future product users.
- Differences in the regulatory and fiscal frameworks.
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