Zebulon Solutions

Zebulon
Solutions, LLC

Zebulon Solutions
An old-fashioned company providing
modern productization solutions

www.zebulonsolutions.com

Zebulon Executive Summary
Solutions, LLC

Our Mission… Our Business… Our Culture… Our Markets…
is to deliver is productization— is old- are diverse,
solutions that save turning R&D fashioned, dedicate including
our clients money projects into d to doing business electronics,
and time. manufacturable in an honest, low- industrial and
products. cost, straight- automotive, but we
forward and specialize in
incredibly hard medical and clean-
working fashion. tech.

Our DNA hails from the corner of Design Alley and Manufacturing
Boulevard, from which we have launched over 100 products

Our Productization Services include:
Technical Services Business Services
 Product Design  Program management
 Technical Analysis  Fractional executives
 Industrialization  Business analysis


Zebulon What We Do
Solutions, LLC

We turn R&D projects into optimized, manufacturing ready products


Zebulon Who We Are
Solutions, LLC

We’re a couple of hard-working guys who escaped the corporate
high-tech velodrome to try to make a difference

Chuck Hodges Keith Howard
President and CEO Vice President
Old Zeb
Sage Advisor


Who We Are
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Our Team
We have a rapidly growing stable of independent contractors who work with us as
needed and are dedicated to getting the job done
• We stand behind the work of all our contractors.
• Weekly reviews with you on your programs keep you up to date.

Most of our team have at least 15 Our skills cover many different
years industry experience disciplines
o Medical o Hardware design
o Electronics o Software / Firmware
o Consumer o Mechanical design and tooling
o Environmental o Chemistry and physics
o Mil / Aero o Test development
o Clean-Tech o Supply Chain
o Computers o Business
o Telecom o Program Management
o Ranching o Intellectual Property Rights


Who We Are
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Our DNA
We’re a young company, but our management group has 50+ years of
productization and business experience, and our team of contractors has 100+
Some notable achievements:
 Productization of the original PalmPilot
 Developed and deployed over 500 test fixtures
and systems for the Xbox
 Complete design, industrialization, and tooling
of the Whirlpool Duet dryer console
 Concept and prototype design of the first Tablet PC
reference design for Microsoft
 Development of PRNDL shifters for General Motors
 Multimillion dollar cost reduction effort of blood glucose
meters for J&J’s Lifescan division
 Design validation testing of tape libraries for Quantum
 Design of custom high voltage driver ICs for Philips SonoSite


Zebulon Where We Are
Solutions, LLC

We’re located in Berthoud, Colorado
 Population 4000, not counting the cows
 Less than an hour from University of Colorado,
University of Denver, University of Northern
Colorado, and Colorado State University
 Denver, Boulder, Ft Collins, Longmont, and
Loveland are all within a 45 mile radius
 And we’re only an hour from Denver
International Airport


Where We Are
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Berthoud, CO


Where We Are
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Act Local, Think Global
Just because we’re old-fashioned folks
from a small town in Colorado doesn’t
mean we’re not global.
 If the right answer is design in India and
production in Poland we’ll make that
happen. Been there, done that.
 We’ve also done it in the
USA, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Hungary, Au
stria, Sweden, Norway, the
UK, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, South
Africa, France, Malaysia, Japan, India and
let’s not forget CHINA.
 We get on airplanes so you don’t have to.

We get on airplanes so you
don’t have to


Zebulon Productization
Solutions, LLC

Productization: taking a concept and turning it into a production stable product
 The design phase is usually where 80% of the effort is typically spent
 The final industrialization phase is where 80% of the problems typically occur

This is not as simple as it sounds, and it doesn’t sound simple

We have a long and distinguished track record of taking diverse products from
science project to volume production. Examples:

o PDAs o Base stations
o Game consoles o Telematic systems
o MP3 players o Optical switches
o Cell phones o Enterprise telsets
o Satellite receivers o Dryer consoles
o Blood glucose meters o Tape libraries


Zebulon Service Offerings
Solutions, LLC

Zebulon Solutions offers variety of technical and business services:

Technical Services Business Services
Product Design Program Management
 Turnkey product design  Project, program or portfolio management
 Design services  Turnkey or partial
 Independent design analysis  PMO setup
Technical Analysis Fractional Executive
 Tolerance analysis  Technical and operational executives on a
 Failure mode effect analysis fractional and / or interim basis
 DFx analysis • VP Eng / CTO
Product Industrialization • VP Ops / COO
 Production test development Business Analysis
 Tooling support  ROI analysis
 Project engineering  Risk analysis
 Supply chain development  Business plan financials
 Process development


Service Offerings
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Engagement examples
We can do as much or as little as makes sense. Suggestions:
 End to end program management
• Your program, managed by a professional
 Concept studies
• You provide the brilliant technology idea and market data; we turn it into a product concept
 Design services
• We provide electrical design, layout, ME design, ME CAD, and firmware / software
 Point solutions
• We can help you get prototypes built, find a test lab, solve your pack-out problem, etc
 Product industrialization
• We can fully develop your supply chain; help you choose a manufacturing partner; set up special
processes; bring up your product at the manufacturing site and qualify your process
 Test development
• Develop a full test plan including design validation test, production test, and outgoing QA


Service Offerings
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Examples by Phase
Concept phase
 We can provide full teams to take a tight look at your product idea and provide a detailed analysis
as to what it will take to get the product into production
 Deliverables examples: Target BOMs; manufacturing analysis; specs; concept protos
Development phase
 We can provide full or supplementary design resources as well as program management
 We can do the full design; pieces of it; or just do the program management of your team
Prototyping
 We manage the outsourcing of your prototypes with local manufacturers
Validation
 We can manage 3rd party validation and regulatory labs
Industrialization
 We plan this out, set up your supply chain and test, manage your tooling, and work with (and help
select) your manufacturing partner to get the production process up and stable


Zebulon Product Design
Solutions, LLC

Turnkey product design Design services
 Product design and development  Design services
• Full turnkey design • E.g. layout, schematic capture, mechanical
• Everything from design to tooling; software CAD, GD&T analysis
to test fixtures  DFx analysis
 Subsystem design and development • Analysis of existing or in progress design for
• Ownership of a subsystem or subassembly manufacturability, testability, environmenta
o E.g. control PCBA or enclosure l compliance (RoHS), etc
• Ownership of a specific discipline(s)  Cost Reduction analysis
o E.g. full hardware and software • Analysis of existing design for potential cost
reductions

Independent design analysis
A second set of expert eyes to review a design, to see the forest for the trees.


Product Design
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Design Disciplines
Electrical System
 System architecture  Requirements capture
 Component selection  Solution ideation
 Circuit design and schematic capture  System architecture
 PCBA DFx  Design specifications
 PCB layout  Test methodology and planning
 Prototype PCBA builds  Verification and validation
 Board checkout  System integration

Mechanical Software / Firmware
 Part breakout and stack up  High level design
 Materials and component selection  User interface scenarios
 3D and 2D CAD design  Detailed design
 Mechanical DFx  Language selection, environment setup
 Tolerance analysis  Code implementation and test
 Mockup and pre-production build  Embedded and web services
 Tooling support


Zebulon Product Industrialization
Solutions, LLC

Product industrialization is…
 Setting up production infrastructure, processes and equipment to enable the successful
launch of a new product concept and turning it into a production stable product

Industrialization tasks include:
 Set up and optimize the supply chain
 Tool design, manufacture and validation
 Set up and optimize manufacturing processes
 Design validation and regulatory testing
 Develop test processes, fixtures, equipment and software
 Design and build custom manufacturing fixtures and equipment
 Program management of the industrialization process
While industrialization is commonly viewed as the back end of the product
development life cycle, it needs to start at the same time as the design


Product Industrialization
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC
Test Development
Engineering verification test (EVT) development
 Develop test procedures, fixtures, software and simulated loads to enable the iterative
testing of early engineering prototypes
Design validation test development (DVT) development
 Develop test procedures, fixtures,
custom equipment and simulated loads
Production test development
 Develop test processes, fixtures,
equipment and software
• Process test
• Functional test
• Parametric test
• Out of box or other QA audit testing

While EVT, DVT and production test all have separate and distinct
requirements, there are synergies and reuse opportunities as the product life
cycle progresses.

Zebulon Technical Analysis
Solutions, LLC
Why do engineers need to do technical analysis?
 Technical analysis is necessary to validate or disprove engineering hypotheses.
 Analysis also provides feedback to design and manufacturing teams

Zebulon Solutions can provide many different types of technical analysis, ranging
from spreadsheet models to complex simulations to collective analysis, including:
 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)
 Tolerance Analysis
 Design for Manufacturing / Assembly / Test / Environment etc (DFx)
 Other technical analysis, including:
• Finite element analysis (FEA)
• Power consumption
• Circuit simulation
• Carbon footprint
• Mean time to failure (MTTF) or Mean time between failures (MTBF)

Good engineering starts with proper analysis

Technical Analysis
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC
FMEA
Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is used to predict potential failure modes
 Both design (DFMEA) and process (PFMEA) FMEAs are necessary for a complete solution
 When done properly, FMEA’s allow for proactive solutions before problems occur, before
returns come back from the field, before yield crashes
 An FMEA can also save money on actual testing by focusing on the items most in need of
test:
• Verification
• Validation
• Production, or
• Out-of-the-box (OOB) audits


Technical Analysis
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC
Tolerance Analysis
Tolerances can be
mechanical, electrical, optical or a
combination
 Tolerances have a severe impact on
• Functionality
• Manufacturability
• Yield
• Performance
 Tolerance stack ups are the main culprit
• Where one component aligns to a second
which in turn aligns to a third, and so on
• Instead of all aligning to a datum
 Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing
(GD&T) is one rigorous variant of this type
of analysis


Technical Analysis
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC
DFx
Proactively analyzing a product early in the design phase for manufacturability etc
can significantly reduce eventual product cost and speed time to volume. Design
for Excellence, or DFx, covers a broad range of disciplines, including:
 Design for Manufacturing (DFM)
 Design for Test (DFT)
 Design for Assembly (DFA)
 Design for Environment (DFE or DfE)
 Design for Supply Chain
 Design for Lowest Cost
It is essential that DFx is a collaboration between the various design and
manufacturing disciplines
DFx cannot be done by design alone, nor by manufacturing
Zebulon Solutions can help bridge the gap between these organizations

If you wait until the design is done to do DFx, it’s too late

Zebulon Program Management
Solutions, LLC

Program management is the cornerstone of our service offering. Our program
management services include:
 Direct management of programs
• Turnkey program management
• Project or subproject management
• Our team are seasoned veterans with many programs completed
• From Concept to Product Launch
 Program Management Office
• We can provide in-house program managers with a PMBOK based system
• Includes reviews, mentoring, portfolio data and statistics ,oversight, post mortems, more
• We can even help set up an in-house own PMO

When we say “Program Management” we really mean
“Portfolio, Program and Project Management” but that’s a mouth-full

Program Management
Zebulon
Solutions, LLC Zebulon Solutions Product Life Cycle

Program Management

Concept Design Validation

Prototyping

Industrialization Stable Production

Zebulon Solutions uses a modified phase-gate Product Life Cycle
 Phases
• Concept: Ideation, feasibility analysis, and proof-of-concept prototypes
• Design: Detailed design and verification
• Prototyping: Building engineering and validation prototypes
• Validation: Testing the design to prove adherence to all specifications and requirements
• Industrialization: Develop and validate supply chain, tooling, test, manufacturing process
• Program Management: Manage all aspects and resources of all phases of the program
 The end of each phase is demarked by a phase-gate
 While some of the phases are in series, a substantial amount of parallelism is required


Zebulon Fractional / Interim Executive Program
Solutions, LLC

Zebulon Solutions provides highly qualified executives on a fractional and / or
interim basis. Unlike most CxO companies, we provide executives with world
class technical and operations skills as well as business acumen.
These executives can provide seasoning to young teams; manufacturing expertise
to R&D centric teams; or just, put bluntly, provide adult supervision. Fill a
temporary hole fast or take advantage of the cost benefits by only paying a
fraction.
Examples of actual engagements:
 VP Engineering for an Australian consumer
electronics company
 VP Operations for a Colorado clean-tech startup
 VP Engineering for a Silicon Valley industrial
products company
 CFO for a Colorado electric bike manufacturer

A month or a year; 10% or 90%

Zebulon Business Analysis
Solutions, LLC
Zebulon Solutions can provide a variety of business analysis types to help our
clients manage their own businesses more effectively
 Cash flow analysis
 Inventory analysis
 ROI analysis
 Risk analysis

Because we also have extensive operations experience, we can bridge the finance
and operations world, so that, for example, inventory solutions take into account
not just cash flow but also yield risks and supply chain impact

“Cash is king” is not just a saying; it’s the truth

Zebulon Case Studies
Solutions, LLC

Real case studies at Zebulon Solutions
 Medical instrument: Proof of Concept design, DFx review, prototyping
 Green dry cleaning: Operations leadership, supply chain development,
FMEA, financial analysis, program management
 Network storage library: Cost reduction and GD&T analysis
 Display touchpad: Engineer leadership, design assessment, systems
engineering, FMEA, tolerance analysis
 Gaming accessory: Feasibility study, cost estimates
 Electric bike: Developed business plan and financial systems
 Battlefield medical device: Feasibility study
 Industrial lighting: Proof of Concept design and prototyping
 Neural network processor: Design update, PCB layout


Zebulon Customer Feedback
Solutions, LLC

Good luck with the next project. I
think Zebulon Solutions rocks!!
Chuck and Keith have extensive
experience bringing products to
Best
market, with particular focus on
semo designing for manufacturability. I
have used Zebulon Solutions to help
us with design reviews and DFMEA
work. They are great to work with,
and have been very helpful.

I can not say enough about the value
Ken
of services and the highest caliper of expertise
Zebulon Solutions provided. Their team of highly
qualified personnel helped make any challenge we
faced seem so easily resolved, I would never hesitate
including them in the future.

Maureen

Our customers seem to like us.

Zebulon Our Blogs
Solutions, LLC

Zebulon’s Thoughts On Productization
Old Zeb opines on the 21st century Insights into the art and science of
from a 19th century point of view productization

www.zebulonsolutions.com/Zebsblog/ www.zebulonsolutions.com/productizationblog/


Zebulon Contact info
Solutions, LLC

Keith Howard: keith@zebulonsolutions.com +1 970 372 9400
Chuck Hodges: chuck@zebulonsolutions.com +1 303 653 3455


Zebulon
Solutions, LLC

Thanks a million!
Ya’ll have a nice day


Zebulon Solutions

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