By the end of the seed stage, the company should have a good idea about potential suppliers of parts and processes, including special devices such as test equipment. A new venture that starts up without even a rudimentary manufacturing plan is quite likely to require additional funding once it faces equipment "sticker shock."
If the company intends to do its own manufacturing, have the plant size and factory location been figured into the plan?
The manufacturing plan is more than a spreadsheet exercise that relates space, people, and product output. It must include an initial attempt to define the plant design in order that the requirements for space and people, including those with special skills, maybe understood. Unlike many of the other resources, acquiring manufacturing capacity calls for a great deal of careful advance planning. If the start-up is predicated on a novel manufacturing process or will need highly trained individuals who can evolve the process, the plan must take into account the location and availability of a work force.
If achieving the planned unit cost and schedule goals is predicated on essential breakthroughs in the manufacturing process, are the necessary resources (manufacturing vice president, specialists, time, and money) available?
If the firm's product technology is embodied in its manufacturing process, as opposed to its product design, then the manufacturing process must be treated as an engineering design and managed and measured as such. High-tech ventures are often predicated on the development of new processes for the manufacture of disks, tapes, semiconductors, printers, and various display devices. In these cases, starting up without a seasoned vice president of manufacturing is a flawed approach.
One firm based its business plan on having a highly automated plant. Although no fundamentally new processes were required to build the plant itself, a total system did have to be developed to ensure proper coordination of all the process steps in order to produce the product.
Is the product design planning process predicated on producing a design that ensures manufacturability and the highest quality?
This rule tests whether manufacturability and quality have been designed into the product from the outset. Manufacturability is not always regarded as a critical aspect of product design. More typically, the product is "thrown over the wall to be built" after the design is done because its manufacturing is thought to require simple and well-proven processes. However, such an approach is unlikely to yield the lowest cost or the highest quality. Unless the firm plans to produce a manufacturing-intensive product, it will probably not have a manufacturing person on board at start-up. The best way to ensure both manufacturability and quality is to hire people who have manufactured high-quality products before.