An Engineering Release Is Not the Finish Line

An engineering release is not the finish line.

Early in my career, I designed electronic products and later worked in product engineering and manufacturing.

That experience permanently changed the way I view product development.

A design can meet its specification and still be a bad product.

Why?

Because the real world comes next.

• Can manufacturing build it consistently?

• Can suppliers hold the required tolerances?

• Can it be tested efficiently?

• Can service teams diagnose it?

• Does it survive actual customer use?

• Can the company make money producing it?

  
  

At one point, our team reduced material scrap from roughly $71,000 per month to about $1,500 per month by attacking product-design and supplier problems.

The lesson wasn’t simply about scrap.

It was that design decisions become business results.

That’s one reason I believe product managers working with physical products should understand manufacturing.

You don’t have to be an engineer.

But you should understand what happens after engineering releases the product.

Because eventually every decision on the roadmap becomes somebody else’s reality:

• Engineering has to design it.

• Supply chain has to source it.

• Manufacturing has to build it.

• Sales has to sell it.

• Support has to live with it.

• And the customer has to value it enough to pay for it.

Product management is where those realities need to meet.