The hardtech glossary

This glossary gathers the working language of hardtech, in the order a product gets developed, from validating an idea to the first production run. Where the industry runs on an abbreviation, we spell it out in parentheses.

hardtech

hardtech covers the physical technologies that combine hardware, software and applied science to solve an industrial, medical, energy or environmental problem. The development cycle runs five to ten years, and the company carrying it needs capital, manufacturing access and regulatory validation.

deeptech

deeptech covers the technologies that come out of fundamental research, with or without a hardware component. An artificial intelligence model is deeptech without being hardtech, because no one has to manufacture an object.

Physical AI

Physical AI covers the systems that sense their environment, decide and act in the real world: mobile robots, autonomous vehicles, instrumented industrial equipment. These systems learn from sensor data rather than from text, which moves the hard part of the work to field collection and to hardware reliability.

Pretotype

A pretotype checks whether anyone would use the product, before anyone checks that it can be built. Alberto Savoia coined the term at Google for a non-functional mock-up, such as a simulation run by hand or a simple product datasheet. A team runs one to get an answer in a few days and for a few hundred dollars.

Proof of concept (POC)

A proof of concept demonstrates that a technical principle works, in the lab and under controlled conditions. It says nothing about manufacturability, about the cost of goods, or about how the product behaves in the hands of a real user.

Prototype

A prototype is a research instrument before it is a demonstration object: a team builds one to ask a precise question and to get a real answer. A hardtech company usually plans ten to twenty prototype iterations before it commits to any tooling.

Design for feedback

Design for feedback means designing each prototype around the question it has to settle, rather than around the look of the finished product. A prototype that targets one or two questions and returns a clear answer is worth more than a polished mock-up that proves nothing.

Iteration

An iteration is one complete loop of design, build, test and learning, each loop tied to a question or to a failure mode that the previous one brought to light. A disciplined run of iterations usually costs between CA$80,000 and CA$300,000 in materials, fabrication and outside engineering.

TRL (Technology Readiness Level)

TRL is a scale from 1 to 9, developed by NASA and adopted by most public funding programs, that measures how mature a technology is, from an observed principle (TRL 1) to a system proven in operation (TRL 9). It rates the technology alone, and it says nothing about the company carrying it.

Design for manufacturing (DFM)

DFM asks one precise question: can a plant produce this design consistently, at the target volume, with people who did not design it, on equipment that exists at industrial scale? Engineers apply DFM at every design review, as a live constraint from the first sketch.

Design for assembly (DFA)

DFA reduces the number of parts and simplifies the assembly sequence. An engineer doing DFA looks for the moment when an operator could fit a part backwards or skip a step without the assembly fixture catching the error.

Design for environment (ecodesign)

Design for environment brings the product's environmental impact into the earliest design choices, across the whole life cycle: materials, energy use in service, repairability, disassembly and end of life. It overlaps with DFM on several decisions, such as cutting the number of parts and dropping permanent assemblies, and it is becoming a regulatory requirement for products sold in the European Union.

PCB (printed circuit board)

The PCB is the board that holds and connects the electronic components of a product. Its design sets the footprint, the thermal dissipation, the electromagnetic compatibility and a large share of the unit cost, and the move from a development board to a custom PCB is often the first real constraint of industrialization.

Additive manufacturing

In additive manufacturing, a machine builds a part layer by layer, in polymer, in resin or in metal, from a digital file. It dominates prototyping because it requires no tooling, and a part validated in 3D printing almost always needs a redesign before anyone injection moulds it.

Bill of materials (BOM)

The bill of materials is the complete list of the parts, materials and components of a product, with the quantities, the qualified suppliers and the unit costs at the projected volume. It is the document that turns a design into a cost of goods.

Design freeze

The design freeze locks the design at the point where the DFM analysis is finished and before tooling starts. Every change made after that point adds cost, time, or both, and several changes in a row can reset the tooling schedule to zero.

Tooling

Tooling covers the injection moulds, dies, fixtures and test jigs a plant needs to run series production. A typical injection mould takes six to twelve weeks to build from a frozen design, and the first parts off new tooling almost always need adjustments.

Non-recurring engineering (NRE)

NRE costs are the one-time costs of making a product manufacturable, and they often include production engineering, tooling, programming and qualification. A company pays them before it sells a first unit, and they never appear in the unit cost.

EVT, DVT, PVT

These are the three validation phases that come before volume production. EVT (engineering validation test) confirms that the engineering works; DVT (design validation test) confirms that the design holds the specifications and the regulatory requirements; PVT (production validation test) confirms that the production line turns out conforming units at the target rate.

Contract manufacturer (CM)

A contract manufacturer builds the product of another company, to that company's specifications, tolerances and quality control procedures. Quebec and Canada hold a dense fabric of contract manufacturers, in machining, in electronic assembly and in materials processing.

OEM (original equipment manufacturer)

An OEM designs and builds a product sold under its own brand, or supplies the components and sub-assemblies that go into the product of a third party. Selling to an OEM shortens the path to market for a hardtech company, and hands over the customer relationship and part of the margin in exchange.

Lean manufacturing

Lean manufacturing organizes production around removing everything that creates no value for the customer: overproduction, dormant inventory, waiting, unnecessary movement and rework. Toyota developed it, and hardtech teams apply it at small volumes too, through standardized workstations, pull flow and continuous improvement.

Lead time

Lead time is the time between placing an order and receiving the component. Long-lead components, such as custom integrated circuits, specialized materials or certified sub-assemblies, force purchase commitments several months before production, and sometimes more than a year ahead.

Regulatory certification

Certification covers the testing, files and approvals required before a product goes to market, under a range of names: Health Canada, the FDA, CE marking, CSA, ISO 13485 for medical devices, DO-160 for avionics. The certifying body owns the schedule, not the product team, and that schedule runs from three to twelve months depending on the complexity of the product and on the markets targeted.

First production run

The first production run is the first lot built in volume with series tooling, series components and series processes, intended for sale or for deployment at a pilot customer. A pilot production in limited quantity comes before it, and its purpose is to confirm that the process holds steady rather than to produce sellable units.

Product datasheet

The product datasheet sets out on one page the specifications, the measured performance, the operating conditions, the certifications obtained and the price. It sells as much as it validates: shown to a buyer before the product exists, it reveals in a few days whether the proposition stands up.