Manufacturing & Production

FUEL closes its own loop: the team that designs the product also takes it to production and ships it. We manage the supply chain and run final assembly, integration, functional test, and quality inspection in-house, then package, warehouse, and fulfill, so a finished, tested product leaves our door, not a drawing package bound for someone else’s factory. We specialize in low-volume production, typically 5 to 100 units, under the same ISO 9001 / ISO 13485 design-control process we design under, with PCB assembly, machining, and molding done by managed partners we specify and inspect.

What we do

Supply chain & build

We source the parts, manage the partners who make them, and put the product together on our own floor.

• Supply chain and procurement management, in-house
• Contract-manufacturer and partner management, in-house
• Final assembly and integration, in-house
• PCB assembly through managed EMS partners, specified and inspected by FUEL
• Machining, fabrication, and injection molding through partners, from parts we designed in-house

Test, QC & traceability

Nothing ships until it passes. We test and inspect every unit and keep a controlled record of what went into it.

• Production and functional test on custom fixtures, in-house
• Quality inspection and QC, dimensional and visual, with metrology, in-house
• Incoming inspection of partner-supplied assemblies against the standards we flow down
• Lot and serial traceability through our ERP system, in-house
• Production documentation: assembly, test, and inspection records

Warehouse, fulfillment & support

We hold the inventory, ship the orders, and stay with the product after it leaves.

• Packaging, warehousing, and inventory, in-house
• Order fulfillment and shipping, in-house
• DFM feedback into design, in-house
• Ongoing field support and continuous improvement after launch

We build in-house at low volume and scale to higher volume through partners, assessed per project.

Tools, standards & methods

We run stock, BOMs, orders, and lot and serial traceability through an ERP, inventory, and MRP system, inspect with CMM, calipers, and gauges for dimensional QC, and build custom production test fixtures per product for functional test. In-house capability includes final assembly and integration, functional and electronics test benches, mechanical load and drop testing, environmental and thermal chambers, and dimensional QC with metrology. Full environmental qualification and emissions testing are done at outside labs.

FUEL holds no certifications. Design and production both run under our ISO 9001 / ISO 13485 process. The electronics and materials workmanship standards below are flowed down to and verified on our manufacturing partners; they are partner obligations FUEL specifies and inspects to, not FUEL in-house certifications:

• Quality and process: design and production run under a quality management system pursuing dual ISO 9001 / ISO 13485 certification, currently at the pre-audit stage
• Electronics and harness assembly (partner flow-down): IPC-A-610 Class 3, J-STD-001, IPC-A-600, IPC/WHMA-A-620, and IPC-7711 and 7721, specified to our EMS and CM partners and inspected on incoming
• Inspection and metrology: first-article inspection of partner parts and dimensional QC per drawing and GD&T on CMM, calibrated in-house when required
• Traceability and supply chain: lot and serial traceability through the ERP, sourcing from authorized distributors
• Materials: RoHS and REACH-compliant product where the market requires it, flowed to partners and verified, with other destination-market rules met per market

Where it fits in our process

Take a design to a separate contract manufacturer and you inherit the handoff gap: the manufacturer did not design it, cannot feed manufacturability back into it, and will not touch a 50-unit run. FUEL builds what FUEL designed. The same team runs final assembly, functional test, QC, and fulfillment in-house under the same ISO 9001 / ISO 13485 process, at the low volumes big contract manufacturers turn away, and supports the product in the field after it ships. Because the design team is in the same building, DFM feedback flows back into the design during development instead of over a handoff wall. See how we work for the full path from concept to production.