• Product
    Back

    Product

    Platform Overview Pricing Partners
  • Solutions
    Back

    By Use Cases

    New Product Introduction Mass Production Data and AI Transformation

    By Industry

    Consumer Electronics Enterprise Electronics Servers and Data Storage Aerospace and Defense Electronics
  • Resources
    Back

    BUILD BETTER HANDBOOK

    A place for visionaries to learn from their peers about getting culture right, NPI, Production, and evaluating new technologies

    Case studies

    See how companies are using Instrumental

  • Company
    Back

    CAREERS

    Job Postings Meet the Team Life at Instrumental Engineering at Instrumental Team Blog

    ABOUT INSTRUMENTAL

    About Us Company News Contact Us Security
  • Log in SPEAK TO AN EXPERT
  • Search
Log in SPEAK TO AN EXPERT

News, Blog, & Resources

Case Studies

All Site

Build Better Handbook: Table of Contents
  •   

    Start Here

    • Introduction to the Build Better Handbook

    • Manufacturing Term Glossary

  •   

    Getting Culture Right

    • Jeff Lutz: Team Culture Drives Product Performancepopular

    • Scrappy Ways to Execute Like Applepopular

    • Building a Culture of Quality

      • Building the World's Most Reliable Products: Insights from Medical and Defense Leaders
      • Fear Management
  •   

    NPI: A How To Guide for Engineers & Their Leaders

    • Leading from the Front

      • Marcel Tremblay: The Olympic Mindset & Engineering Leadershippopular
      • Anurag Gupta: Framework to Accelerate NPI
      • Kyle Wiens on Why Design Repairability is Good for Business
      • Nathan Ackerman on NPI: Do The Hard Thing First
      • JDM Operational Excellence in NPI
    • Building the Team

      • Quality is Set in Development & Maintained in Production
      • 3 Lessons from Tesla’s Former NPI Leader
      • Maik Duwensee: The Future of Hardware Integrity & Reliability
      • Reject Fake NPI Schedules to Ship on Time
      • Leadership Guidance for Failure to Meet Exit Criteria
    • Screws & Glue: Getting Stuff Done

      • Choosing the best CAD software for product design
      • Screws vs Glues in Design, Assembly, & Repair
      • Best Practices for Glue in Electronics
      • A Practical Guide to Magnets
      • Inspection 101: Measurements
      • A Primer on Color Matching
      • OK2Fly Checklists
      • Developing Your Reliability Test Suite
      • Guide to DOEs (Design of Experiments)
      • Ten Chinese phrases for your next build
    • NPI Processes & Workflows

      • EVT, DVT, PVT Stage Gate Definitions
      • Hardware Schedules are Driven by Iteration
      • The Shedletsky Test: 12 Requirements for NPI Programs
      • 4 Best Practices for Generational Knowledge Building
  •   

    Production: A Primer for Operations, Quality, & Their Leaders

    • Leading for Scale

      • Navigating Factory Moves and Scaling Production in an Era of Uncertainty with PRG's Wayne Miller
      • Steven Nickel on How Google Designs for Repair
      • Petcube’s Alex Neskin Embraces Imperfection to Deliver Innovation
      • Proven Strategies for Collaborating with Contract Manufacturers
      • Greg Reichow’s Manufacturing Process Performance Quadrants
      • 8D Problem Solving: Sam Bowen Describes the Power of Stopping
      • Cut Costs by Getting Your Engineers in the Field
      • Garrett Bastable on Building Your Own Factory
      • Oracle Supply Chain Leader Mitigates Risk with Better Relationships
      • Brendan Green on Working with Manufacturers
      • Surviving Disaster: A Lesson in Quality from Marcy Alstott
    • Ship It!

      • Serialization for Electronics Manufacturing
      • Tactics to Derisk Ramp
      • E-Commerce Ratings Make Product Quality a Competitive Edge
    • Production Processes & Workflows

      • Failure Analysis Methods for Product Design Engineers: Finding Sources of Error
      • Failure Analysis Methods for Product Design Engineers: Tools and Techniques
      • How to Improve First Pass Yield with Instrumental
      • How to Identify Dark Yield
      • JDM Operational Excellence in Production
  •   

    Thinking Ahead: How to Evaluate New Technologies

    • How to Buy Software (for Hardware Leaders who Usually Don’t)

    • Adopting AI in the Aerospace and Defense Electronics Space

    • Build vs Buy: A Guide to Implementing Smart Manufacturing Technology

    • Leonel Leal on How Engineers Should Frame a Business Case for Innovation

    • Saw through the Buzzwords

      • Managed Cloud vs Self-Hosted Cloud vs On-Premises for Manufacturing Data
      • AOI, Smart AOI, & Beyond: Keyence vs Cognex vs Instrumentalpopular
      • Visual Inspection AI: AWS Lookout, Landing AI, & Instrumental
      • Manual Inspection vs. AI Inspection with Instrumentalpopular
      • Electronics Assembly Automation Tipping Points
      • CTO of ASUS: Systems Integrators for Manufacturing Automation Don't Scale
    • ROI-Driven Business Cases & Realized Value

      • Building a Buying Committee
      • How to Buy Software (for Those Who Usually Don't)
  •   

    Webinars and Live Event Recordings

    • Get Me Outta Here! Racing to Full Production Somewhere Else

    • Tariff Talk for Electronics Brands: Policies Reactions, Reciprocal Tariffs, and more.

    • Materials Planning: The Hidden Challenges of Factory Transitions

    • Build Better 2024 Sessions On Demand

      • Superpowers for Engineers: Leveraging AI to Accelerate NPI | Build Better 2024
      • The Motorola Way, the Apple Way, and the Next Way | Build Better 2024
      • The Future of Functional Test: Fast, Scalable, Simple | Build Better 2024
      • Build Better 2024 Keynote | The Next Way
      • Principles for a Modern Manufacturing Technology Stack for Defense | Build Better 2024
      • What's Next for America's Critical Supply Chains | Build Better 2024
      • Innovating in Refurbishment, Repair, and Remanufacturing | Build Better 2024
      • Leading from the Front: The Missing Chapter for Hardware Executives | Build Better 2024
      • The Next Way for Reducing NPI Cycles | Build Better 2024
    • The State of Hardware 2025: 1,000 Engineers on Trends, Challenges, and Toolsets | Build Better 2024

      • Scaling Manufacturing: How Zero-to-One Lessons Unlock New Opportunities in Existing Operations | Build Better 2024
    • Build Better Fireside Chats

      • Aerospace and Defense: Headwinds & Tailwinds for Electronics Manufacturing in 2025
      • From Counterfeits to Sanctions: Securing Your Supply Chain in an Era of Conflict
      • Design for Instrumental - Simple Design Ideas for Engineers to Get the Most from AI in NPI
      • Webinar | Shining Light on the Shadow Factory
      • Tactics in Failure Analysis : A fireside chat with Dr. Steven Murray
    • Preparing for Tariffs in 2025: Resources for Electronics Manufacturers

      • How to Prepare for Tariffs in 2025: Leaders Share Lessons and Strategies
      • Tariff Talk for Electronics Brands
      • Talking Trade Compliance with Gabrielle Griffith
      • GUIDE: Moving Your Factory
  1. Build Better Handbook
  2. NPI: A How To Guide for Engineers & Their Leaders
  3. The Shedletsky Test: 12 Requirements for NPI Programs

The Shedletsky Test: 12 Requirements for NPI Programs

Estimated reading time: · copy link

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, CEO of InstrumentalWhat are the requirements for an excellent new product introduction (NPI) process?

In 2000, Joel Spolsky published a self-described "sloppy" list of the twelve things to rate the quality of a software team. I first encountered it while posting software job listings, where I was asked to report my "Joel Score" so that candidates would know what kind of software team we are (we give ourselves a 10, by the way).

As a mechanical engineer who co-founded a software company, I often wonder what hardware can learn from software and vice versa. I've taken inspiration from The Joel Test to posit my own "sloppy" criteria for rating the quality of a hardware development process, based on my experiences working closely with many hardware companies across multiple manufacturing verticals.

The Shedletsky Test is company-size agnostic. Most items are more about process and rigor and don't directly cost money to implement, just expertise.

The Shedletsky Test

Twelve yes or no questions. Your process gets one point for each question where the answer is yes.

Here's the test:

  1. Does your team formally review designs and drawings before tool release? A formal process may include a checklist, multiple people spinning CAD and redlining drawings.
  2. Are you confident that each critical stack or fit in your product has a tolerance analysis? Add one bonus point if they all live in a centralized location where each team member can access them.
  3. Do your builds have explicit entry and exit criteria — and if a build does not meet exit criteria, do you repeat it? Minus one point if you have ever done an XVT.
  4. Do you send product design engineers and operations team members to each build? If you are leveraging a JDM model, replace the product design engineer with the system engineer -- the person who owns the design on the brand side. If you build locally, do team members spend significant time on the floor watching and learning from the process?
  5. Do you individually serialize all units and track data by serial number?
  6. Quality process, based on production volume:
    1. For high-volume: Do you destructively test 25-50% of your units at each build?
    2. For low-volume: Do you have a documented strategy and operational plan to achieve Zero Defect or other contractually-obligated quality requirements?
  7. Do you complete and review failure analysis on each unit that fails?
  8. Do you measure and review all critical-to-function and critical-to-quality dimensions at each build and calculate Cpk?
  9. Do you have a main issues list (MIL) process? This includes tracking issues, assigning specific individuals to close them out and regularly following up on the progress.
  10. Do engineers have easy and immediate access to build data without asking the factory?
  11. Do you invest in your factory team? This includes rapport building, training and dedicated time to level each other up based on the expertise that each brings to the table.
  12. Do you invest in backup designs (Plan B, C, etc.) and engineering tools for your team?

The Scores

If you totaled more than 10, your hardware development process is a tight ship and likely benefits from fewer development fire drills, higher quality builds and a higher likelihood of on-time product releases.

If you totaled 10, you're in good company. We have worked with several well-known Fortune 500 companies and admired startups at or "almost" at 10 points. A 10-point process still has holes through which issues can slip and fester, but this level of rigor in the hardware development process is serviceable.

If you totaled nine or below, your hardware development process has serious holes which could have consequences. While it's possible to "get lucky" and not have serious issues as you move from development to production with a less-than-10-point process, our experience suggests companies with processes like these tend to struggle to release high-quality products on time.

Views: 1523
  • Log In
  • Speak to an Expert
  • Twitter_Logo_Blue

Change Notice

Get notified when we update the handbook

Please fill out a valid email!

Thanks for your subscription!

© 2025 Instrumental. Privacy Policy