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What Matters to Design Engineers? (Part 1-of-2): The Integration Investment
In the summer of 2018, we submitted a survey to 373 members of the global design engineering community to understand what was most important when selecting a supplier of embedded components. We will be sharing our key findings over a two-part Tactile Touchpoints article series.
Question: Rank these following considerations on their level of importance when evaluating embedded components suppliers.
- Component piece-price
- Details on the manufacturing equipment the used to produce the components
- Availability of integration resources
- Accessibility to applications engineers
- Customer references & testimonials
Top 3 Results:
Like all smart shoppers, design engineers generally prefer suppliers that offer low-cost, low-commitment options for them to evaluate a sensing technology. It’s important to remember, however, is that the component piece price is really just a single facet of a much grander technology investment. There are actually several other direct and indirect costs that may weigh heavier on your integration process than sensor cost.
While we do offer several low-cost, off-the-shelf sensors from our online store, we offer a lot more value to design engineers in the form of integration resources and personalized applications engineering services. Once the design engineer has a chance to experiment with our sensors and determine they’re a good fit for their application, they typically take one of two routes as they enter integration process:
- Enlisting the help of one of our on-staff Applications Engineers, or
- Simply downloading the free integration resources we have on our website.
These resources and services are immensely valuable to help design engineers reduce design time, limit revisions or redesigns, and ultimately getting your design on the smoothest path to market possible.
These are just some of the many ways we go the extra mile to ensure a successful sensor integration process. This free eBook shares many other ways that Tekscan can help design engineers save on both the direct and indirect costs of integrating FlexiForce touch sensor technology into their design.
Stay tuned for further findings from this survey!