We invent, design, and manufacture great electronic products.
Have a great idea but not sure how to make it? We’ll suggest technologies and processes that can bring your idea to fruition. We’ll make prototypes for you to try out your idea in the marketplace.
We follow a gated product lifecycle to capture your expectations and prepare your idea for volume production including verification, certification, and market trials. You own all the product IP.
Combining design and manufacturing means procurement, component engineering, process/product optimization, and test system support are under one roof. We have open book pricing. You own the test system.
At QEI we work hard to become part of your team. If your company doesn’t have an existing electronics design culture, we’ll recommend our process developed from experience, formal instruction, and best practices we’ve seen in action. A first step always includes a (mutual) non-disclosure agreement. While a paper agreement is important, we value and respect a handshake. We would not be in business successfully without protecting and respecting our customer’s intellectual property. Next we work to ensure we’re a personality fit with your team. We like our customers and enjoy positive, day-to-day working relationships. Let us know how we can help your company succeed. We’ll let you know if we can deliver what you’re looking for before committing costs.
Many of the products we’ve developed have not existed before.
To explore technologies, processes, or methods we may initially propose a bounded-cost study phase. During this fixed cost phase we’ll determine if we can build what you need. You own all our findings and recommendations.
This is the key phase in our process. Before we design anything, we write a detailed Statement of Work (SoW) listing our understanding of your expectations, all the product specifications, high level test plan, deliverables, technology ownership, manufacturing plan, and committed costs. Yes, at this stage we tell you what the project will cost.
If you don’t change the SoW then the development costs don’t change. This document forms the basis of our development process and we don’t start till we’ve received your Purchase Order for the project. Your PO# is your approval and acceptance of our quotation.
Schematics, software, mechanical drawings, prototypes, weekly progress reports, and test reports.
We have our own development tools, labs, and test equipment to tackle most projects including thermal and humidity chambers. If we need specialized equipment we rent tools on your behalf.
Verification means we need to complete a test plan, usually some sort of regulatory certification and (most critically) field testing.
End-customers always find undocumented product features no matter how thorough an engineering test plan. We won’t commence production without a field trial.s
We use open book pricing. You see the cost of every part, process step and courier delivery. This means we only need to negotiate our gross margin and you’re not left guessing what your product really costs.
Once you’ve signed off on all the testing we commence (ramped volume) manufacturing using components sourced from around the world. We prefer to manufacture locally.
We don’t make changes without telling you what’s going on, but we continually engineer products in production. Each time we build we may find a cost optimization, process or quality improvement or a vendor may change a component. We then roll these changes into the next build. Having engineering and production under one roof means all this happens without your having to initiate the effort.