The Eleven Stages/Phases of a Custom Display Assembly Project

There are eleven stages/phases of a custom display assembly project, which typically take between 18 and 24 months:

1.?????Concept Phase

2.?????Preliminary Design Phase

3.?????Budgetary Costing Stage

4.?????NRE & Prototype Purchase Order (PO) Stage

5.??????Design Phase

6.?????Design Approval Stage

7.?????Prototype Stage

8.?????Prototype Approval Stage

9.?????Production Quotation Stage

10.?Pre-Production Phase

11.?Production Stage

?

4.?????NRE & Prototype Purchase Order (PO) Stage

Non-recurring engineering (NRE) charge is the one-time expense incurred to research, design, develop, produce and test a new custom display assembly. Sometimes it is referred to as a tooling charge, however, this is not strictly true as the tooling is not transferable.

In some circumstances the customer will amortise the NRE cost across the prototype unit cost, which is acceptable.

However, we will not amortise the NRE cost across the production unit cost, because at this stage there is no guarantee the project will reach production, for reasons out of our control.

If we are using an optical bonding process we can tool the bonding jig using our 3D printer at a much lower NRE cost. This bonding jig is suitable for manufacturing prototypes but not production.

At this stage we require payment in advance to cover our costs (labour, custom component tooling, bonding jigs etc..). ?

Upon receipt of the NRE and Prototype PO we proceed to the next phase....

?