Case of study: rcpractica
How can I make a product? Where do ideas come from? How do I start?
We share the story of rcpractica in its way of a product idea, step by step from the experience of an entrepreneur.
My name is Mariana Delgado, a scout from group 5 of Irapuato, Guanajuato II. As every scout, I was taught to be always ready to help others and build a better world than the one that I found, this noble task requires constant training, knowing first aid, and practicing constantly. During a course, I was able to notice that despite we trained two times a year, it was not enough, one of the chiefs looked like she was washing clothes while doing compressions, for the next course we had already forgotten some of the basic instructions, but above all, we didn’t feel ready to attend emergency situations yet. What could we do to make our knowledge constant and a part of ourselves to the level that we could instantly react to an emergency?
The story of rcpratica begins in an entrepreneurship class with the classic homework: “You are going to create an innovative product or service”, there had been a month since I identified the actualization problem regarding CPR, a good need I was able to start with.
The first step in a project always is the identification of a need, as we have discussed in previous blogs, starting with an idea, and trying to fit it inside a project, doesn’t always turn out fine.
The second step is to validate that the identified need really exists through validation with the people that could be involved if someone else had that same need, how did they solve it, what alternatives exist. Along with the team of Soluciones Kenko, we arranged interviews with people in charge of CPR training, people that had to receive the training, and with healthcare professionals, thus demonstrating that the need was real.
Once the need was validated, a rapid prototype is made, the first prototypes were simple, barely made with whatever we found in our pockets, where we started noticing the solutions that could help us to face the problem.
Let’s remember that constant validation helps us to accelerate the development times and to mitigate the risks that the project could present. After the first validation, we proceeded to choose the idea that seemed to address in the best way the project offering a solution. Amongst the requirements that we identified, we chose the top 3 that we were going to work with in the first version of the product.
The engineering hard work done by the development team of SK led us to the second, third, and fourth prototype of rcpratica, each version more focused than the previous one, it was required to consult experts, discover suppliers, materials, programs, etc. Everything to reach a final design.
Once a fifth prototype that fully satisfied all the previous requirements was obtained, and seemed to have a good acceptance in its validation process, it was able to advance to the next step, technological maturation. Technological maturation implies making an engineering prototype, or in other words, a prototype as close as possible to the final product and preparing the files for its pilot production.
We decided to carry out a 300 unit pilot production. Taking into account the minimum quantities required to complete our BOM (Bill of materials), this process was fully performed inside the quality management system, with validated inputs, acceptance criteria, and a Batch pilot record completed.
The products from the pilot production were released during the year 2020, the same year COVID-19 arrived on the American continent and the entire world. In the beginning, the pandemic seemed to be an obstacle for commercialization, schools were closed, companies and everyone else seemed to have suspended their activities, virtuality started… Trainers needed new tools to keep teaching people how to save lives and keep their works active, they used rcpractica as an alternative in RCP long-distance education, and it turned out pretty well. That same year Auxiliatec from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Salvando Latidos, and Soluciones Kenko organized a massive RCP online training, reaching more than 300 people, including a security guard that worked in a residential private club, who was able to apply his training when a person had a hard attack during his shift, saving his life.
Currently, rcpractica is a useful tool for people to learn to save lives, its initial production was sold, and two other products from the same family are about to be released, it is in the patent process, with an industrial design, a trademark, and more than 1000 trained people.
Everyone has the capacity to create incredible things, but the most important is to start working to accomplish whatever we aim to achieve.
Are you ready to create the next invention that will save lives? Share your experience with us!