Inertia Product Development

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

At Just Vertical, we design, manufacture, and grow breathtaking indoor gardens. We’re on a mission to be the world’s largest collective of farmers, all without owning a single piece of farmland. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Inertia Product Development, and what were your goals?

Industrial Design, Workflow Analysis, Design for Manufacturing (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), Mechanical Engineering, Prototyping, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We were initially looking for a product manufacturer, but the deciding factor was that Inertia offered a full suite of design and project management services as well as manufacturing and supply chain support.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We started with the goal of designing & manufacturing our first in-home hydroponic grow garden, the AEVA. We learned through the process that it would be more efficient to also develop our smaller version the EVE at the same time, so worked on both projects simultaneously in the end. A high-level overview of the stages:

•  range of concept designs led to the development of a “looks like / feels like” prototype
• Both the exterior and interior of the product, went through a redesign for scalability and manufacturability, consolidating the number of parts and integrating several production processes
• inertia managed our tooling build and delivered a pre-production pilot run and confirmed parts met our quality requirements
• Production of our first order had it in-market by Q4 2021
• We are now scaling up volume and mass production with our second order

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Approximately 10 people, ranging from Product Designers, Product Development Engineer, Program Manager, Mechanical Designers and Manufacturing Engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The combination of production-optimized design & process management led to:

• Eliminating expensive equipment
• 10x reduction in production time and labour costs
• 40% reduction in manufacturing space
• Over 60% reduction in cost on the optimized elements, and 20% savings in overall unit cost
• Shortened lead times

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Highly effective, we had a single project manager throughout the product design and two on the manufacturing side. We received weekly project updates, which were efficient and effective. Applicable members of their team were available any time we needed them.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their teams had a broad range of experience and backgrounds, and were highly collaborative, working together towards the end goal of creating a beautiful, manufacturable, scalable and sustainable product that our customers would feel good to have on display in their homes.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We initially had trouble justifying the cost of the design and prototype development, but ultimately received a lot of value from it, being able to showcase it to investors, and at events in advance of the official product lunch. Although they presented a number of cost / profit models, understanding the extended use of the prototypes might have helped ease our apprehension about this.