touchscreen tablets
Lower Design Cost

Thanks to years of experience and significant pre-existing IP, most of our designs are half done before we start. The years of experience have produced significant hardware, software and knowhow, all ready for reuse. That work has been optimized for faster designs, higher quality and lower cost.

Additional savings come from Touch Design’s “do-it-once” approach. Early reviews and design enhancements which anticipate design-for-manufacturing needs and agency approvals typically save at least one board spin. The results are higher yields, reduced project time and lower design costs.

The above advantages are significant. Touch Design’s touchscreen module projects are often completed within 6 months, versus starting from scratch and taking 12 to 24 months. Both time-to-market and design costs are dramatically reduced.

lower design costs
Lower Product Cost

The most important product cost drivers are: 1. part prices, 2. number of parts, 3. manufacturing yields, and 4. operating system.

 

lower part pricingLower Part Pricing At Touch Design, many of the higher-cost parts are used in common with other client designs, increasing usage and lowering parts cost. This economy of scale helps insure competitive product costs for each client.

 


fewer parts
Fewer Parts Architectural decisions and part selection can significantly lower product cost. At Touch Design, our high performance processor is often powerful enough to run both the touchscreen module as well as the client’s application. When that happens, the processor, memory, circuit board, power, and communication ports are shared to significantly reduce board size, power and cost. Contact us for more information about processor sharing for your application.

Additionally, we save parts counts by designing lean boards with only the functions necessary for the client’s application. For example, if an application doesn’t need Ethernet or UART interfaces, those ports are designed out, saving cost, time, power and board size.

 

improved yieldsImproved Yields When first-pass yields are low, those costs eventually surface in the form of higher prices. If yields are high, product costs are noticeably lower, deliveries are more on time and the quality is higher. At Touch Design, we take manufacturability seriously to insure higher yields. (see the “Additional savings” paragraph above in the Lower Design Cost section)

 

Linux OSNo Cost OS Touch Design engineers use Linux as their operating system of choice (but are proficient with others as well). They like Linux because it is open source and reliable, it scales easily to project needs, it is tunable and it’s free. Instead of paying around $80 for embedded XP, the Linux savings can be part of a client’s cost advantage.