For more details, please click on http://bit.ly/IGTpzB

After Priio peeps finished work on a certain little project, if someone had asked, “What are you going to do now?” — they could’ve answered the classic, “I’m going to Disney World!”

The product development athletes at Priio indeed had an all-star in the tire pressure monitor that was developed for dump trucks – but went first to Disney’s monorails in Orlando.

“The original target market was dump trucks because five percent low tire pressure is potentially thousands of dollars a month lost in fuel,” says Priio president Larry O’Cull. “It’s a big, big deal.”

The company developing the monitor, however, found an additional market with the myriad tires of Disney’s monorail system.

“These monorails have like 60 tires each and they’re all placed underneath where they’re out of sight and difficult to access,” says O’Cull. “So when you have a low tire on one of these, you’ve got a maintenance guy with an attitude!”

Trying to locate which tire is low in such a complex setting is made easier by having these “smart” pressure monitors. Each one has a unique ID and a companion receiver with a display. And each one can be named something like ‘third car, left rear’ – in which case the maintenance staff would know exactly where to look.

“We designed these using a MEMS sensor,” says O’Cull. “There’s also a long life battery on board. You can screw this in and it will last three years. The maintenance staff is much happier.”

Grinning, O’Cull adds that if he’d known the just how successful the little gadget would prove in this particular setting, he might’ve upped the price – just a bit: “I think life time tickets to Disney World for the staff might have been a reasonable bonus!”

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A cool, fast car, maybe?

Very likely, anything bearing the term “hot rod” is a cool, fast car – but it’s also likely a prototype.

If you’ve ever seen a genuine hot rod, you’ll note it generally looks nothing like the cars you see rolling along highways and byways everyday. That’s because it’s a functional model – something cobbled together to prove a point of feasibility (usually linear speed).

It’s still impressive – but its purpose is not the same as a finished Lamborghini. The latter is the result of hundreds of iterations and design procedures developed to produce a visually perfect cruising machine. The hot rod, on the other hand, can be the offspring of junkyard parts and a crack engine. But then – they’re not designed with the same purpose in mind.

So it is with the certain prototypes. When an item concept needs to prove a point – say, a particular functionality or mobility – the result may look more like something out of a Tim Burton movie than a shelf-ready retail model, but that’s because the goal is not looks but rather proving its chops.

“It may actually be that something which will end up inside the human body will first be prototyped out with PVC pipe and some duct tape,” says Priio president Larry O’Cull (only half joking). “In the earliest stages of product development, you often need to prove the concept’s viability before you even begin to think of how it’s going to look. Once you do that, you actually have one of the hardest parts of your journey done.”

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To see the related article, please go to: Does it work?

Inflating then popping a balloon is this year’s task of the annual engineering competition sponsored by Theta Tau fraternity at Purdue University.

Granted, to inflate a balloon and pop it doesn’t sound like a particularly challenging task – unless you’re doing it with a large machine which uses at least 20 mechanical steps that show good engineering and great entertainment value.

The contest is based on the outrageous contraptions of Rube Goldberg, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist of the early 20^th century. The idea is to build a machine that takes the most convoluted and creative route to successfully accomplish a simple task.

The event will commence at 9:30 a.m. It is family-friendly, free-of-charge and open to the public.

For more information, please click on www.rubemachine.com.

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“Digi-Key is building a design services network across the country, and they didn’t have anyone in this state,” says Priio president Larry O’Cull. “They investigated by interviewing manufacturing representatives, local vendors and clients – and our name came up very favorably.”

Digi-Key lists a Design Services Provider network as part of a full-orbed service orientation. They provide links and information to their customer base for recommended fee-based service providers to improve project efficiency and hasten time-to-market: http://www.digikey.com/design-services-providers/design-firm/Priio.

Scott Raeker, a Digi-Key spokesperson, wrote in an email confirming Priio’s certification that he enjoyed speaking to the client references. “I feel Priio is an excellent design firm and I look forward to working with [the] team,” he says.

OFFICE MANAGER

What you should know about her: When she and her husband are not taking videos of their cute little daughter, she is plotting ways to support her jewelry habit.

Role model: Rosa Parks for being outspoken about her beliefs.

Trouble spot: Cannot be seen in public without a tan.

We’ve been hard at working getting everything in order at our new location – 5706 W 74^th Street, Indianapolis (in Park 100).

We hope you’ll join us for munchies and libations as you tour the new digs. (There is lots of color – Sgt. Pepper would be proud.)

While research is an excellent practice, the word is often an unfortunate (and inaccurate) synonym with development. A lot of companies have sections called R&D (research and development), but the two terms have distinctly different – albeit complementary – purposes. Research leads to outcomes. Development has a goal.

People with a product to develop not infrequently require a good bit of research for setting up the particular parameters by which a path to development may be blazed. This actually requires a completely different skill set when it comes to fulfilling the task.

There are warning signs that a project may be slipping from development into research, such as:

• Let’s look into that…

• What if we…

• How long would it take if…

• What would it cost if…

You may notice the frequent “if” statements. Unfortunately, these can get your development process all “iffed” up – and you will almost certainly veer off the path leading to a design outcome.

Development is what happens after all the research is done. An understanding of the difference is good design practice – and good stewardship.

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