Optimizing an Existing Product: Lower Cost, Higher Reliability

You already ship a product, but it costs too much to build, has a field issue that keeps surfacing, or simply needs a refresh. FUEL is a one-team, one-roof product development firm in Calgary that optimizes products already in the field: we tear it down, re-derive the spec, and run a targeted redesign for cost, reliability, and manufacturability, re-validated in-house before it ships.

You’re starting with a product in the field

Your product works and sells, but something needs to change: the bill of materials is eating your margin, a failure mode is generating returns, or the design has aged. The goal isn’t a clean-sheet redesign; it’s a targeted improvement that doesn’t break what already works. Companies shipping a device who need to take cost out, fix a field issue, or refresh a design start here.

What we discover & define for you

Even an optimization starts at Discover & Define: you don’t skip straight to cutting parts. We begin with a teardown and assessment, re-derive the specification of what you actually ship today, and set clear optimization targets: cost, reliability, manufacturability, whichever matters most. That re-discovery is what keeps an improvement from quietly breaking something else. You come away with an honest picture of where the product stands and a targeted plan for changing the design.

Then the full path

From there the work runs the full path, but iteratively rather than greenfield. A targeted redesign at Engineer & Design, value engineering and design for manufacturing carried out by the engineering and design teams under one roof, feeds straight into in-house Prototype & Validate, where the change is re-validated against the targets before it reaches Manufacture & Scale. Every engagement runs Discover → Engineer → Prototype → Manufacture; for an existing product, the emphasis is re-discovery up front at Discover & Define and disciplined in-house re-validation at the end, with trusted partners for tests that need specialized facilities.

Capabilities this draws on

Optimization leans on mechanical and electrical engineering and in-house manufacturing for value engineering and design for manufacturing, taking cost out and improving reliability, with software and firmware brought in wherever the redesign reaches them. Running the teardown, redesign, and re-validation under one roof is what makes a targeted change safe to ship.

Proof, no names needed

A company already shipping a device came to us to take cost out, fix a field issue, and refresh it. Even here it started at Discover & Define: a teardown and assessment, re-deriving the spec, and setting the optimization targets of cost, reliability, and manufacturability. A targeted redesign and in-house re-validation followed, iterative rather than greenfield. The result was a more manufacturable, more reliable version, re-validated before it shipped.

That’s a representative engagement: a composite of real work, anonymized, not a single named project. We’ve optimized products already in production many times: since 2018 we’ve delivered 200+ projects for 50+ clients, and there are more projects than clients because they come back. The pattern, not any one result, is the track record.

Your work stays yours

Optimizing a product means opening up a design you already depend on, so we protect it from first contact. Mutual NDAs are standard, you own all the IP through assignment or work-for-hire, and formal information-security practices keep your design files and everything we change walled off from everyone else’s. Because engineering, design, manufacturing, and validation all happen under one roof, your product isn’t scattered across a chain of subcontractors, and because we re-validate in-house, it isn’t shipped out to outside labs. Our work is developed under a quality management system pursuing dual ISO 9001 / ISO 13485 certification, currently at the pre-audit stage, and we run every project under it, not just medical devices.