4 Steps to Successfully Customise Tapes

Of course, existing solutions that fulfil the needs are always easier to use, and reservations about pursuing a custom product design are understandable. If ordinary is fine for you, you can stop reading here and let others take the lead.

With the right partner providing dedicated processes and in-house capabilities, direct collaboration with technical teams and reliable experience, customising tapes can be streamlined, cost-effective and lead to successful projects with minimal effort on your part.

And the outcome can pay off in many ways as customised tapes can not only make new developments a reality, replacing traditional solutions, but can save time and money in the long term by streamlining production processes, reducing maintenance efforts, or combining multiple functions in a single product. The benefits customised tapes provide are significant, and following proven steps can maximise success rates.

The essence of a customisation project begins with understanding your vision and defining the value a solution can bring, and this is where your co-development partner can assist. They can help to quickly grasp the parameters, establish requirements based on your expertise, and narrow down the numerous options to a manageable selection of possibilities.

An in-depth understanding of the needs, challenges, and requirements becomes the foundation of the project as your partner utilises their expertise and capabilities to propose a solution that meets your timing, performance, and pricing requirements.

Often, a successful co-development process is supported by evaluation tools during a collaboration session to ensure that critical aspects are not overlooked and to clearly define expectations, milestones, and deliverables. In many projects, this step can significantly reduce development time as new options may emerge through mutual understanding.

Once understanding and expectations are established by all parties, customisation projects are ready to be kicked off with the creation of samples to ensure the project progresses quickly. At this stage, the most promising options are chosen from available materials and technologies for initial sampling, typically on pilot machinery or through small-scale rapid prototyping.

In some cases, samples may be fabricated in a very short timeframe, or in others it may take a bit longer, depending on the complexity. Often, the early samples are used to validate the understanding of the application needs and to ensure a project is on the right track.

The samples provide valuable feedback on your needs and can be adjusted based on your or your valued customer’s feedback. A good development partner can give an estimate of how smaller-scale validation samples might differ from larger volume work on the production equipment.

If feasible, evaluation under realistic application conditions can often ensure success in selecting the most promising options or in providing feedback about the parameters that need to be further modified. This stage allows for quick investigation of solutions to further narrow down the selection to keep your timelines on track and build confidence.

Based on the test results of the sample phase, the project enters the trial phase where the first materials are produced under real production conditions, but at lower volumes, as the parties involved ensure that all the parameters have been properly accounted for.

Typically, this phase involves few, if any, changes, but there may be minor adjustments needed to optimise processing or ensure a seamless experience for you or your customer. Items such as final packaging and production handling are typically reviewed during this phase of the project.

Depending on the complexity of the innovation, several runs may be carried out before the solution officially moves from the production phase, but often the results are used in viable products. In the trial phase, it is critical to ensure robust testing of any relevant parameters under real conditions, as well as the examination of commercial feasibility for scale-up production, to ensure a mutually successful launch.

The “final” stage is the full production stage, after the solutions have been proven, where the production of larger quantities is carried out on full-scale equipment allowing for further process optimisation, in-depth quality controls have been established and the value of the solution is understood.

Solutions may be reviewed from time to time, as innovation carries forward, going back to the start of the process, but with the optimised solution in place it’s time to pop the corks and celebrate another successful project.

With the right partner, customising tapes can be easier than you might think as they can use their experience and capabilities to suggest novel solutions for your needs. Customised tapes can pay off in many ways and provide competitive advantage or pave the way to new performance levels of next generation applications and equipment.