WOTA Corp.
Developed the base design for a compact new product that condenses their technology
WOTA Corp. works to a mission of tackling water problems at their structural root, and has brought products such as WOSH and BOX to places and situations around the world where water infrastructure falls short. When our support began, a small, highly skilled team was running many field trials while developing new products at the same time, and could not find enough hours to hold both quality and speed.
Through interviews it became clear that what they wanted was the foundation of a compact, price-competitive product that condensed their existing technology.
We put forward a concept, raised it through several design reviews, and had a prototype finished one month after starting. During the build we also did some of the sheet-metal bending and hole-making by hand ourselves, to keep cost and schedule down.
When the prototype was finished, the team at WOTA told us it was "hard to believe it could be this compact", that "this looks ready to sell as it is", and that it had been "physically the fastest development schedule possible".
Executive Officer and Vice President of Product Development, WOTA Corp.
Kanta Yamamoto
I share Mr Hirayama's commitment to supporting Japanese startups through engineering. He has an unusually strong grasp of design concepts across a complete machine, which comes from his years at a large manufacturer, together with well-rounded judgement that comes from his time in a venture. I learned a great deal from him myself, and he did much to raise the quality of our development.
CLEAT Inc.
A platform concept that called for genuinely new thinking
"Come up with a platform that works across markets A, B and C."
Until then, each of those markets had its own optimised product — and as a result volumes stayed low and prices stayed high. CLEAT saw that, and their proposal was a genuinely inventive answer to it.
How to realise it was left entirely to us, with the brief "put ideas forward freely, as many as you can". For a designer, that is a dream of a project.
Because the ideas had to take concrete form within a deadline, we held reviews every week, keeping the right balance, and reworked the concept from the ground up as many times as it took to be satisfied. The effort paid off: the client contact, who never holds back a hard opinion, told us "this is excellent — inventive, an approach nobody has taken before, and a platform that is competitive in every one of those markets".
President and CEO, CLEAT Inc.
Kensuke Yamashita
We asked Simptech to design the body concept for an entirely new type of ultra-compact four-wheel vehicle. The requirements were simple to write and hard to deliver: simple, low cost, light, flexible, and so on. The result went well beyond what we expected. In a short time they produced an output that had not only the function but a certain beauty of function, at a value above what we paid. If you are considering working with them, my advice is to ignore brand names and go with Simptech.
Instalimb, Inc.
Stronger cost competitiveness through a change of supply source
The request was about as simple as they come: "change the supply source and strengthen our cost competitiveness". Being simple made it unforgiving — the result would show up plainly as a number.
Interviews made it clear which parts had to change, so we started with reverse engineering of those parts and produced 3D and 2D data. In parallel we shortlisted candidate suppliers and requested cost estimates, and ended up able to put forward three of them.
Director, Instalimb, Inc.
Shinichiro Kon
For sourcing in India and Taiwan, and for parts in the unusual field of prosthetics and orthotics, they gave us good proposals that looked ahead from early prototypes to final volume production. They also stayed alongside us through development problems particular to a startup — such as not yet being able to commit to firm volumes the way a large company can — and we got a result we are satisfied with.