What is involved when co-designing a customised drive system?

To find a motor solution that fits your requirements, you’ll need to weigh up costs and benefits and decide whether an off-the-shelf or a fully customised solution is best suited to your needs. There will be factors to think about, such as the level of efficiency or control needed and considerations around noise, size, interfaces, interactions, speed and torque, and more. Some of these may exist in an off-the-shelf solution. However, if your application is unique, or you want to develop something entirely different from your competition, this option may not be suitable. It may contain limited design choices, come with more or less than you need, or come with trade-offs.

Fully customised solutions

A fully custom-made solution is ideal if your project requires special form factor, a specific type of motor, or additional performance capabilities. By having your hardware and software components tailored to your exact requirements, you can be assured your unique design brief can be realised.

What are the options available with a fully customised solution? We have summarised this down into four key options, highlighting the benefits and trade-offs of each:

• Self-designed

• Supplier designed – design consultants, based on your specifications  
• Co-designed with a supplier or consultant
• Collaboration with FPT

Self-designed
Designing a motor yourself can be a good option if you have the necessary knowledge and skills to do so. You will have the advantage of having full creative control over the project. However, you will need a full team, be adept at engaging with many others, and then find, select and approve a supplier to manufacture it for you. The separation of the design and manufacturing components can bring challenges when designing the motor. You will need to make sure the design can be manufacturable at the scale and quality you need. This can be particularly challenging if your design team doesn’t have the manufacturing experience and contacts with the right partners.  

There are four main points that need to be considered carefully before commencing a self-designed project:

• Do you have the right team with relevant design experience?  
• How will you ensure you are applying design for manufacturing thinking?
• Who could manufacture it for you?
• How can you mitigate the risks when splitting design and manufacturing roles?

For more information on the above points, please refer to our article we put together on designing a motor yourself here.

Supplier designed – design consultants
With this option, you can select a suitable supplier and have your specification file sent to them for work to start on your application. Bear in mind that the supplier does not know your application inside out and there could be a good deal of negotiation involved prior to getting it off the ground. If you are not a motor expert, you may be at the mercy of the supplier and the result may not be entirely what you had envisioned. There may be unexpected changes or additions along the way, which could result in costs escalating or your timeframe being extended. Similarly, should any issues arise, there may be additional charges incurred when they are remedied.

As this option is not as hands-on as co-designing, you will likely have a lot of communication between you and the supplier before reaching an agreement on design and manufacture. Again, timeline and budget could be affected here.  

If your supplier does not have the manufacturing capability, you will still need to find, select, and approve a supplier to manufacture the final design. This can be challenging, as the final design could bring significant manufacturing challenges around the production at the scale and quality you require.

Co-designed with a supplier or consultant
Co-designing a project can be the perfect choice for getting what you need. By working together, you and the supplier or consultant can figure out the exact requirements for the project together. There are many parts of the process to work through together, such as software API’s and functionalities, how to integrate them, mechanical interfaces, and more.  

Working together in this way helps you understand what you really need, what is reasonably possible and looks at providing solutions to solve problems. Should there be issues when working towards production readiness, all parties will be open and aware of ongoing challenges. It’s about finding the best solutions together to arrive at the best outcome. The supplier/consultant can and should challenge you – go deeper into the process to ensure what you’re designing and building is fit for purpose and unique to you. The result may even turn out to be somewhat different from the original idea or concept, and some components or functionality from the original concept may not be required.

Testing will be different when co-developing. All test plans, results and facilities are shared. That way, double investment, double time, double effort etc. are avoided wherever possible. The final product gets better faster, development outcomes are based on more data and reliability of the product is significantly improved.

What is important is how to choose the right supplier and what capabilities they bring. Ideally their capabilities will complement what you already have.

Collaboration with Fisher & Paykel Technologies
You have decided co-designing is the way forward for you. What are the steps involved when co-designing with FPT? When you collaborate with us, the following steps form our process:

• Exploration

In this first phase, we’ll deep dive into what your real needs and wants are for the project, and how we can work together effectively to meet them. We will finalise the business plan draft, define expectations, discuss costs and provide transparency across the process, ensuring we’re always on the same page. It is important to ascertain the investments of both parties, and who will be doing what as part of the collaboration. We’ll go into the technical aspects; motor controller, drive system, software interfaces, etc. We will also talk about the commercial side; scale, and whether we can manufacture it ourselves, or what level of customisation it will require.

• Development

In the next phase, we will work together to develop your application and drive system. We will present options and solution sets before narrowing it down to one final solution. By this stage you are going to have a clear view of what your application will look like, what the interfaces are, along with how and where it will be manufactured. We will know the motor specifications, what materials, software, controller, along with the API’s etc. This information will all be defined in the product specification document at the end of this phase.  

At this point, after prototyping etc., the design phase will now be complete, and decisions will be made on how to proceed with the project.  

• Execution

During the previous phase, all the theory and drawings were completed, and the suppliers of parts, materials and machinery supplied their input for planning and quoting. Now in the execution phase, with all of this now done, it’s time to work towards getting production ready. Investment is made in machines and tools which are now being built, trial products at each stage are being tested, and adoptions to processes and design are being implemented as and when required. The same process will happen for the drive system and the application it will be built into. All the new learnings during production readiness preparation must now be implemented.  

• Post launch

Following the product launch, your relationship with FPT won’t abruptly end there. With in-field optimisation, subscription and data models, there will be a roadmap of new generation launches, updates, product upgrades, etc. This ongoing maintenance and improvement ensures that your product stays current, and with regular customer interactions, you’ll be in safe hands.  

Conclusion

As outlined in this article, there are several options to consider when looking for the right solution. An off-the-shelf solution may suit your requirements adequately, however more of an individual approach may require specific functionality, features, etc. and you will need it fully customised to your requirements.  

Fisher & Paykel Technologies' co-designing process is in-depth and comprehensive. Our teams have a wealth of knowledge and experience and will work with you to come up with the ultimate solution for your application.