Workshops in October: Are You Getting Ready to Manufacture Your Innovation?

You’ve got a great clean energy technology product idea. You even have a prototype. You just need some advice on making your design lean and cost effective enough for actual manufacturing and commercial success.
You are not alone. In fact, there are so many innovators like you that the U.S. Department of Energy commissioned the creation of the Build4Scale training curriculum to help businesses design their cleantech product for manufacturability and move from prototype to production. The DOE also sought partners to deliver the curriculum directly to businesses. FuzeHub was one of those chosen to bring Build4Scale to manufacturers across New York State.
Dan Radmoski, one of creators of the Build4Scale curriculum, will be leading the free workshops, which have been scheduled for Oct. 9 in Binghamton, Oct. 10 in Buffalo and October 18 and 19 in Stony Brook on Long Island. Dan is the Chief Strategy / Operating Officer for the Optimal Group in Detroit, as well as an advisor to the Lawrence Technological University Collaboratory, a program that helps accelerate and scale small “hardware” product manufacturers.
“For years I’ve run incubators, and I’ve found that developing a physical product can be much more difficult than developing software or an app,” he said. “With a physical product, you can run into a lot of issues with it not being designed well for manufacturability, for assembly, for durability, to be serviced or to be shipped. There are so many things that go into what we call “Design for X” principals.”
Joining Dan will be a number of FuzeHub’s manufacturing experts, who will serve as mentors and provide attendees with one-on-one coaching. The workshops—which are intended for people with prototypes or at the very least a proof of concept—will include several exercises devised to arm innovators with the tools they need to develop an intelligent bill of materials and bill of process. Innovators will be challenged to look at their designs and ask, “Can this be manufactured at scale cost-effectively?”.
“Almost any company that goes through this program immediately learns something about their product,” Dan said.
After the workshop, FuzeHub will provide follow-up support, including outreach to determine what innovators need next and connections with partners who can help.
“We will be tracking how many attendees connect with New York suppliers, how many develop contracts with New York suppliers, and, longer range, the impact we had on the businesses in actually launching products,” Dan said. “Seeing a company get their product to market and hopefully manufacture it locally is the greatest accomplishment we could expect out of this.”
The sessions on Oct. 9. 10 and 18 are “101” workshops intended for companies with products in the early stages. The Oct. 19 Long Island workshop is level “201” and will focus on helping manufacturers scale up production.
For more information or to register for a workshop near you, click here.