Here are a few examples of ways the team at Fawn Electronics has applied their expertise to support customer goals for product improvements.

Example 1: Cost Reduction in a Medical RF Product

Challenge: A prototype product failed initial qualification testing because lens material was incompatible with RF signal reception requirements. Redesign corrected this and cost reduced other elements of the process.

Solution: Initial material selection for the photo eye lens allowed in too much ambient light. A change in material solved this. In addition, a separate switch was enhanced by a Mylar medium with embedded colors. This enabled the unit to better withstand hospital cleaning procedures and eliminated concerns about switch life since the Mylar eliminated friction between two plastic surfaces.

Example 2: Reliability Improvements/Cost Reduction

Challenge: A consumer product was experiencing electrical and mechanical field failures and had production limitations.  Gluing of plastic parts was used to prevent air leaks. Plastic components were produced by one supplier with the electronics and final assembly performed by another supplier.

• Solution: Fawn took control of the total project with real-time communication between electronic, manufacturing and plastic engineers.  Actions implemented included:  
• Tolerances were reviewed and modifications were made to the plastics tooling.  These changes, plus changes in the production processes reduced performance problems caused by warping, interference fits of the impeller to the shroud and air leaks. 
• Changes were made to the electrical design to make it more robust and better able to operate in the home environment.  Reliability was improved and production limitations were removed through a more repeatable production process. 
• Cost benefits were also achieved during evaluation and design enhancements. 

Example 3: Cost Reduction of Panel

Challenge: Production of an instrumentation panel was being performed in Asia.  All documentation was in Japanese.  The customer wanted to move production back to the U.S., but at the offshore price which was a $25 difference. They needed a U.S. contractor to develop and incorporate cost reduction design changes to the plastic and electronic elements of the panel.

Solution: The redesign involved both modifications to the plastics and electronics.

On the plastics, buttons were changed to one common size which reduced mold tooling and molder set-up times. The identification nomenclature was moved from the buttons to the panel to eliminate a secondary pad printing process and unique part numbers for different buttons.

Within the electronics, the main switch board assembly was lengthened to 20" to eliminate additional small board assembly and interconnecting ribbon cable. The main switch board material was changed from CEM single-sided paper phenolic to double-sided FR4 and laid out to eliminate approximately 100 zero ohm resistors. This material change resulted in labor and material savings, faster production throughput and reduced failures. Different language sets software was embedded into the microprocessor, eliminating the need for a connector on end of the display board that had been required for peripheral download of multiple languages. A costly EPROM socket was replaced by a lower cost low profile socket. Finally, a custom LCD was developed that is assembled in-house by Fawn.