Understanding product reliability, lifetime, expected failure points, and downtime are useful for mass deployments and critical infrastructure. They are also useful for determining expected warranty returns and required spares, and establishing whether cost savings can be made in the design.

We can assess and predict product reliability in a number of ways, from numerical methods (e.g., Siemens Norm SN29500) to interpreting ALT and HALT test data. Using statistical analysis and curve fitting (Weibull, Chi-Squared, Poisson), we can model failure rates extrapolated over the product lifetime, giving year-by-year survival rates. These can also be adjusted for climatic conditions, ensuring full understanding of the implications of deployment.

Understanding MTTF, MTBF and MTTR can minimise stoppage and technical downtime, or simply help when determining which equipment to buy where multiple vendors exist.

When purchasing or rebranding third-party equipment, ensuring regulatory requirements are met is essential to prevent losses and reduce exposure. This can also be true if from equipment manufacturers looking for independent assurance to sell to customers.

Often requirements can be missed when putting a product on the market, even if the safety aspects have been covered. This is particularly common when dealing with environmental regulations (e.g., WEEE, RoHS, REACH), or if exporting to a different geographical area.

In addition to regulatory compliance, we can perform independent safety assessments and FMEAs to evaluate how equipment will perform with different internal and external faults.

Understanding manufacturing costs is invaluable when buying high volumes of equipment. BLS can reverse-engineer devices and estimate the cost of manufacturing and shipping. Our proprietary tools allow us to build a bottom-up model of component, PCB assembly (manual and pick-and-place), injection moulding, metalwork, testing, software, packaging, and shipping costs. These are adjusted for anticipated volumes and country of manufacturing. Electrical component typically form the bulk of the cost. We use our modelling and experience as product designers to estimate volume discounts.

We can also highlight any areas where cost can be reduced, either through design changes or component substitutions. This type of should-cost exercise helps our clients decide whether ‘buy or build’ is the best approach, or to work with a preferred supplier to achieve the cost target.

Significant deployments of equipment requiring firmware upgrades carry risks, especially as the firmware evolves and grows while still using the original hardware. From the FOTA deployment process to implementation on the equipment, BLS can evaluate and mitigate the risks to prevent security breaches or bricked units.

BLS consultants can review patents on your behalf to help you understand any existing IP and its potential effect on your product or invention. This critical review will also enable you to ensure that your own patents achieve sufficient coverage of your invention to protect your IP.

The interface between inventors and patent lawyers can need some careful management to ensure you realise your end goal. Our consultants have worked with a number of patent lawyers and are well versed in both explaining technical content to them and explaining the lawyers’ intentions to the inventors. Through this service, our specialist IP team will help streamline the patent application process, ensuring you achieve the best possible outcome.

Before starting a new IP development, it can be helpful to carry out an IP landscaping exercise to understand what patents already exist in your market.

During this process, it is best to review all the relevant patents to understand any overlaps or potential issues you might have. Our experienced IP consultants will help you identify any existing patents and review their content. We’ll then present an overview of the IP landscape to you in an easily accessible format.

During this process, you may find that your freedom to operate with your new IP is restricted. If this is the case, our consultants will advise you on alternative technologies or methods that will allow you to circumvent the existing patents.

Our specialist IP consultants will work with you to map out long- and short-term strategic goals for your technology.

We’ll provide invaluable industry insights to help you ensure your goals can be realised. We can also support you with feasibility studies and identification of the technology readiness levels (TRLs) of key technologies.

During a feasibility study, we can investigate how achievable your technology goals are by carrying out a number of activities. We’ll look to create works-like prototypes to test the intended functionality of your product. We can also carry out detailed paper-based studies to enhance your understanding of how the product might behave. Finally, we can carry out a cost analysis to demonstrate the potential COGS of the technology, and also carry out a detailed cost-benefit analysis.

We can support you with: