Alex Gammelgard
Recent posts by Alex Gammelgard
Andres Morey and Samuel Wurzel are changing the way you shop for electronic parts. Andres and Sam, who studied physics together at Brown, then pursued PhDs in astroparticle physics and plasma physics respectively, are the founders of Octopart—a Google-esq search engine for electronic parts. Octopart makes it easy to compare the prices and availability of [...]
A couple of weeks ago I shared some big picture questions to ask when launching a new product. While a lot of the big picture questions (like, how much do we expect to make from this product, why are we launching something new in the first place, etc.) are VP or C-level questions, a successful [...]
We’re offering something new at Arena—single-user, lightweight BOM management. Let me explain. We’ve come a long way since our early days as BOM.com, and today Arena is used by thousands of manufacturers around the world. And while we’ve solved the problem of capturing, communicating and controlling product data for small to midsize organizations with our [...]
As I mentioned in my last article on new product introduction (NPI), launching a new product is stressful—even in the best of organizations. At Arena, we’ve been working on a couple of new products ourselves, Arena PartsList and Arena PDXViewer, so I’ve gotten to see a bit of what goes into new product introduction first hand. [...]
New product launches are exciting but stressful! Launch haphazardly and you will find yourself on board a sinking ship. Launch strategically and you can accelerate your time to market, minimize your overall investment and maximize your profits—and with lower risk! Because a new product introduction can make or break a company, our partner Product Realization [...]
Although a solid change management process is absolutely necessary, it’s easy to fall into an overly complicated, unnecessary or misunderstood engineering change request (ECR) process—especially if your process lacks purpose. In some cases, by the time you craft the ECR, add in the appropriate documentation, talk it over with the product engineer and send the [...]
With 80% of people residing within 50 miles of a coast, it’s not surprising that efforts to better understand and protect our oceans get a lot of attention. Our customer, Liquid Robotics, has been all over the news lately with their Wave Glider, an autonomous ocean-powered robot that can travel long distances, hold station and [...]
This is our last blog post of 2011! Happy (almost) New Year! All I have to say is, where did the time go? From the earthquake in Japan, to the floods in Thailand; from the robot takeover at Foxcon, to the growing onshoring trend, 2011 was certainly a crazy year. I really appreciate everyone who [...]
It’s the end of the year—the best time to get organized for the year to come. If you found yourself struggling with out-of-control changes in 2011, maybe it’s finally time to create and formalize an engineering change process. While creating a process to manage the unexpected may seem oxymoronic, for a business to run successfully, [...]
When it comes to trading and logistical excellence, the Netherlands have a pretty stellar track record. Out of the 155 countries studied by The World Bank in 2010, the Netherlands was rated third for logistics competence and quality, second for logistics infrastructure and fourth for its customs environment. And although the Netherlands makes up 0.25% [...]
