Such is the way of this small firm, which specialises in embedded designs and wireless technology and is dedicated to helping everyone from inventors all the way up to big companies realise their designs.
If you want to develop products within a company, you have to first have the equipment and tools, and then you have to build a team and get a good team culture going, said Simon Blyth, electronics design engineer with LX Group.
“Then finally you get to designing something and you set up processes and you'll make all the mistakes that people make when they haven't designed things. It's a really long process, so just having a dedicated company that just cranks out high-quality designs and at low cost suits the industry.”
Speed to market
Four years ago, a group of electronics engineers formed a company to not only meet the needs of electronics engineers, but also to help promote rapid product development, said Blyth, adding that speed to market is more critical than it's ever been.
“We're living in a world where if someone does something in one part of the world, everyone knows about it straight away, so you really need to be so fast to market. We see a lot of people who spend a year or two getting their product out there. It's just far too long. You have to get it pretty quickly.
There are a number of different reasons someone would need to use the LX Group Services of a firm like LX. You have an idea you think might change the world. The thought of having to make it happen from beginning to end could be daunting enough to turn you off.
“We have some people bring us in because they don't have internal expertise to actually do designs; they don't have internal engineers,” said Blyth.
Sometimes they will come in with no more than a piece of paper that barely resembles a design, Blyth continued. Others will have taken their ideas a little further and have a prototype in hand when they walk through the door. Or then other people have a prototype that they want to put into a commercial form. Others might want us to step in as a part of their team; they might want us to do a certain section of a larger design, and that's usually the larger companies.
While LX can put a concept through to product for operations of all sizes, Blyth said more often than not, the company is used as R&D for a larger organisation.
“We seem to get more of the complete products form the entrepreneurs who are just starting a company,” Blyth said. “They kind of see us as their R&D team. It’s where our clients get their economies of scale; we'll just kind of crank out their products for them, and they don't have to have a technical engineering background.”
Customer value
Completing the design and building a prototype on the premises is only one step of the process LX conducts for its clients. When it comes time to actually manufacture the design, LX turns to its partner Hetech in Brisbane.
LX Group concentrates on is its customers.
“We like to focus on the design aspects, which is where we can add value to a client's design. The opportunity for adding value is very much caught up in the innovation in the product. We can provide our customers with a complete turn key process. Right from the initial, conceptual level innovation through the design phase, manufacturing and support.”
Future success
LX Group is another company that had to weather the economic climate, though Blyth will tell you they didn’t really feel it to mid-2009.
“Initially the first part of the year we were super busy and so we were at that point it was like 'what crisis?' It took a little while to filter through to affecting us. And it did.
“We got quieter than we had been for some time. There were a lot of projects that you would normally win straight away that were being postponed – we weren't losing to competitors but rather they might have had a proposal and be keen to go ahead, but were just going to wait six months. Or they had an investor who had just pulled out.
“During the economic downturn we really tried to look at our overheads and processes and tried to get leaner and more efficient,” said Blyth. “When it came to processes, it's just phenomenal how much you're wrapped up in it. So we’ve always been big on just getting more and more efficient in our design process and we're really seeing the benefit.”
With the economy picking up again, LX is setting its sights on 2010. “We aim to provide our customers with not only a great technical service”, Blyth said, “but also help them to be commercially successful with their ideas and products.”
Fitness award
While designing prototypes for customers is its main business, LX Group once in a while will step outside its day to day and design something itself. And all Simon Blyth, electronics design engineer, had to do was go to the gym.
[LX Group WMD3000]
The LX Group team can make anything happen from a sketch on a piece of paper to a fully formed idea. The company also develops its own designs, such as the WMD3000 for which it received industry accolades at last year's Electronics News awards.
The result was the WMD3000, a device that monitors many aspects of a user's gym workout, including cardiovascular and weights training, and transmits that data wirelessly to a base station in the gym via ZigBee. That data is then uploaded to a personalised website.
“I went to the gym and figured out a problem," said Simon Blyth, electronics design engineer for LX Group. "I'm a big one for electronics engineering and control systems, and this devices offers feedback and can improve efficiency."
The device is still in development, though Blyth said it didn't take long to put together a prototype. The design paid off. LX Group was the recipient of best application of test or data acquisition equipment, as well as best overall project at last year’s Electronics News awards in September.
http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/Article/Behind-the-design/511520.aspx
Published by LX Group for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.
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