Personalization
Our customer’s smartphone is a leader in the Android market. When launching a new model, our customer worked with PCH to deliver a personalized phone case infrastructure that could deliver a custom phone case globally within three days of placing the order.
The challenge
Responding to growing consumer demand for personalization, our customer offered custom phone cases for its smartphone product line. When challenges arose in the personalization process with their original product development partner, they asked PCH to analyze the situation and make recommendations for improvements. The priorities were to provide a high-quality personalized product and create a reliable fulfillment model that could deliver to customers globally, within three days of placing the order. Because the newest model of smartphone was scheduled for imminent launch, PCH put in place a solution to meet the launch of the phone.
PCH solution
PCH’s early analysis revealed problems in the original equipment design and printer specification, the development process and the fulfillment model. Our customer wanted its phone cases to meet the highest reliability and cosmetic standards. The quality of the final product is dependent on the material quality and consistency of the coating chemistry, how the coating is applied and the post-treatment. As the coating involves a thermal transfer process, it is highly sensitive to fluctuations in the temperature and humidity in both the equipment and ambient conditions. PCH designed and specified new equipment to minimize coating variance and sensitivity to ambient conditions. In addition, PCH carefully controlled the product development environment.
The pre-engineering validation test (EVT) phase included equipment design, fabrication and qualification of the design as well as printer specification and sourcing. During the EVT phase, PCH conducted case molding, coating, dye-sublimation and reliability testing. Multiple samples were created for field testing, informing the process and product improvements. Stringent reliability tests, such as boiling the case in water for 30 minutes, temperature and humidity cycling, drop-testing and chemical resistance tests, were conducted to ensure robustness and durability.
The result
PCH provided a reliable, efficient and high-quality solution that enabled our customer to successfully address issues that were impacting the product quality and customer experience.
At PCH, we love solving problems and delivering efficient and reliable design engineering solutions that perform at production scale. This project was the perfect fit for us. Evolving from the original process improvement consultation, to a full-scale custom design brief, it allowed us to leverage our engineering, prototype and testing, pre-production and manufacturing capabilities and ultimately, deliver another high-quality product for a premium brand.