Verification Upstream Process, a Quality Assurance Method for Product Development in ODM Mode

Abstract

Product development of many high-volume consumer products has moved to original design manufacturers (ODM) during last few years. The ODM market has grown steadily and has been estimated to reach several hundreds of billions euro currently. In ODM business mode, ODM customer sets requirements for product, carries out quality assurance activities, and approves the product finally. ODM’s role is to manufacture the product and to participate in product development activities with ODM customer or to do the research and development completely by itself. Naturally, there are remarkable differences between the ODM and ODM customer in order to make this working mode meaningful. ODM’s development and manufacturing may be closer to market, resourcing can be more flexible and thus shortening time to market, labor costs can be lower or ODM may simple have specific knowledge on new technology like electronics chipset needed in the product. In this article, we describe the benefits and challenges of ODM mode. The main focus is on quality assurance activities. We describe how one quality assurance method verification upstream process (VUP) can be used in ODM business mode. With VUP, we can improve verification and validation (V&V) requirements setting, harmonize V&V tools and methods as well as to improve results reporting. VUP focuses on early risk management, where ODM takes care of part of quality assurance by itself.