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Over a 2 year partnership, I helped a massive defense communications manufacturer reduce their electronics spend by over $120M. My team focused on redesigning communications products to reduce annual unit costs while retaining the hyper-strict functional constraints of military equipment.
The defense industry is seeing a large influx of startup entrants, like Anduril, founded by Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus VR). These entrants are challenging the entrenched incumbents, like our client, and squeezing them out of highly valuable government contracts with reduced costs.
We worked with various groups within our client's organization from manpack radios, to power amplifiers, night vision goggles, and supercomputers that enable the navigation avionics of the world's most sophisticated fighter jets. We developed a design-to-value process for this unique industry that produces low-volume, high-cost, high-complexity electronics products.
Various early mockups, starting with a deck of basic bicycle cards.
Playtesting with other game designers at Protospiel.
Thousands of games playtested with users.
Layers upon layers upon layers of design iteration.
The end results was increased supply chain resiliency, product savings of over $120M, newly adopted design and development processes, and a higher contract win percentage - without reducing the viability of these mission critical electronics.
If you're curious to learn more, please reach out:
ross@utilitygamelab.com
