What kind of customers does Optotec have?

On our website, you can find a section called “References,” where you’ll find logos of some of our customers and a few pictures of products we have designed. However, these so-called public references represent only a fraction of the customers we have had the pleasure to serve over the years. Product development activities are always more or less secret by nature, and as a product development partner, we are expected to maintain absolute confidentiality. Therefore, we often cannot provide detailed information about our customers or the nature of the projects we have undertaken for them. However, in this blog post, we will give you a glimpse into the types of clients we have and the projects we undertake for different types of customers.

Concept development and prototype design for inventors and innovators

Based on the nature of their operations, our customers can be roughly divided into three groups: aspiring product developers, industrial companies, and various product companies. Aspiring product developers are typically individuals or micro-businesses with an idea for a new product. Such customers require our assistance in areas such as product ideation and concept development, prototype design and manufacturing, or determining the production method and costs of a product. The project may also involve advising on various financing options. The typical starting point for a project with this type of customer is that the product idea exists only in the customer’s mind or perhaps has been sketched on a piece of paper. As an example of this type of customer, we can mention a project we completed last year, where the client had an idea for a pet hygiene accessory. We helped the client in developing the product concept and created a 3D model and manufacturing drawings based on the chosen concept. Subsequently, we produced prototypes of the product.

Extra hands and expertise for industrial companies

Industrial companies, on the other hand, form a highly diverse customer segment with a wide range of needs. Some of the industrial companies we work with require additional resources for their in-house product development teams, while others outsource specific areas of product development to us, such as mechanical design or technical documentation.

Companies needing additional resources rent mechanical designers from us, who work as part of the client’s in-house product development team, often at the client’s premises. The need for additional resources varies in duration, but typically these projects last from a few months to over a year. Renting designers from us provides clients with a flexible way to acquire additional resources, and it is a sensible alternative to hiring in-house designers, especially for companies with seasonal resource needs or those requiring varying types of resources. For example, one of our clients specialized in environmental technology has rented additional resources from us for tasks such as designing various casing solutions and testing equipment.

In addition to clients utilizing designer renting services, we also have industrial companies that outsource various aspects of the product development process to us. For one client engaged in heavy industrial manufacturing, we have performed tasks such as welding assembly design for pipelines, technical documentation related to the calculation and selection of process pipeline components, as well as thermal and flow simulation for pipelines. Furthermore, we have conducted mechanical design for various conveyors for multiple industrial companies.

A wide range of services for product companies

The customer segment of product companies also consists of various types of companies that we serve across a broad spectrum. Roughly speaking, this segment includes companies manufacturing optical, electronic, and medical devices. Many projects involve designing new products or further developing existing ones, but not all of them. For example, one of our clients had developed an electronic consumer product and needed our assistance with the technical documentation required for product marketing. This client’s project included determining and producing documentation related to CE marking, as well as defining and implementing markings and instructional documents for the product packaging. Another client had a product for which the resistance of the locking system and casing to vandalism needed to be verified through testing. For this client, we prepared a testing plan and performed the vandal testing ourselves.

To conclude, our customer base consists of a heterogeneous group of companies with diverse needs. Serving such an array of clients naturally requires us as a design company to possess a wide range of expertise. However, we see this as a positive, self-nourishing cycle: the more diverse projects our designers get to work on, the more versatile they become as product development experts, and the better we can support our customers in their diverse product development challenges now and in the future.

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