New product development (NPD) is often driven by cost and schedule. In the electronics industry, being first to market with a new technology or product is crucial to its success, and enhanced speed to market is what differentiates world class companies from the rest.
In today’s high-tech world, we heavily depend on electronics for our health, safety, mobility and economic welfare. When they fail, the results can be as minor as consumer annoyance to as severe as loss of life. For these reasons, it’s necessary for all electronics manufacturers provide product warranty. A warranty, in its simplest form, means the manufacturer of the product guarantees that the product will function as expected without failure for a given period of time in a specified environment.
When considering recent advances in technology like autonomous vehicles or cloud computing, it’s easy to forget that as little as 20 years ago, most people didn’t have a home computer. The internet wasn’t fully functioning until the late 1990s and mobile access wasn’t commonplace until the dawn of the 21st century.