Category: Camping

Montie Design Hosting Student Design Contest for Outdoor Gear

Prizes of Up to $500, Commission on Product Sales to Be Awarded

(Morrisville, N.C.) Collaborative product design and development firm Montie Design is hosting a student design contest for Winter 2011 with prizes of up to $500 and a two-year commission on any products that go to market within two years of design submission.

Participants are being tasked with designing a new product for the Montie Gear line of outdoor shooting, hunting, and archery products which grew out of the success the firm has enjoyed with its X-Rest line of portable firearms rests.

“We’ve found there is an incredible amount of interest in sturdy, lightweight portable gear for hunters and other folks who enjoy camping, backpacking, hiking, and outdoor shooting sports,” Montie Roland, president of Montie Design, said.

The X-Rest originated as a hands-on, intensive review of product design and manufacturing for Montie Design staff, Roland said, but soon took on a life of its own once the original version was made available for sale.

“Once we marketed the product outside of the product design world, in the firearms and outdoors industry, that’s when things started to roll,” he said.

The design contest is generating buzz and support in academic institutions throughout North Carolina. According to Donald Corey, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Appalachian State University, anytime a student can develop a product for a “real world” application, their educational experience is heightened.

“The fact that the winning product might go into production multiplies their intensity for making the project feasible and successful,” he said, adding, “For the winners the benefit is immediately evident in their resumes and portfolios.”

Prof. Corey went on to explain that in this job market anything a student can do to increase their visibility to a potential employer is helpful. “Winning this contest, and having the piece produced and available for sale will really impress these potential employers, making often difficult hiring decisions easier,” he said.

Montie Design enjoys a strong relationship with the NCSU College of Design as well as industry groups for students, such as the Industrial Designers Society of America. The firm regularly hosts interns who engage in differing hands-on activities from concept to design to prototyping, manufacturing and marketing.

Laura Taylor, president of the NC State Student Chapter of IDSA, worked with Montie Design to conceptualize the design contest. Taylor, a senior from Charlotte, said the contest will help energize the IDSA membership and provide sought-after challenges for participants.

“This is a great opportunity to learn what real design looks like, stretching beyond the concepts we are familiar with in the studio,” she said.

According to Taylor, the contest gives design students the chance to see what it takes to be a real designer. “It moves past pleasing professors and focuses more on addressing the needs of the real market and pleasing the client,” she said.

The design contest is open to current college students from across the United States beginning December 1, 2010. January 18, 2011 is the deadline for submitting a description of basic product concept; the final design proposal is due on February 17, 2011 at 5:00PM EST. Submission information and other contest specifications are available on the Montie Design website, www.montie.com.

Download the Contest Flyer

About Montie Design
Montie Design is a collaborative product design and development firm with core competencies in industrial design, mechanical design and fuzzy front end services. Implementing a client-centric approach in taking products from concept to marketplace, Montie Design balances vision with usability in realizing products that are economical to manufacture, elegant and robust. The firm operates out of the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina with access to industry-leading technology, resources and innovative thought. For more information, visit www.montie.com.

Mining Cash From Your Manufacturing Operations

Mining Cash From Your Manufacturing Operations

Thursday, October 21, 2010
11:30am – 1:30pm
100 Dominion Drive, Suite 101
Morrisville, NC 27560

The financial meltdown has made access to capital very difficult to obtain and expensive for many companies.    This event will explain what steps manufacturing businesses can take to take advantage of substantial amounts of stored cash in most, if not all enterprises, not only within their four walls but within their supply-chains as well.  The good news is that these tools can be quickly deployed to free up cash now.

What will be covered:
The impact of the “Great Recession” had on the Manufacturing Sector
The difference between “push” and “pull” supply chains
How can modern supply chain methodologies impact the bottom line
Critical KPIs (Key Performance Indices) to track to make bottom line improvements.

SPEAKER BIO:

Stephen Parker is CEO of KPISolutions. His career spans over twenty-five years, with experience in manufacturing, international commerce, executive management, corporate growth strategies, sales, technology development, and corporate financing.

He is renowned as a capital efficient restructuring expert. He holds patents in lean enabling technologies and has worked with a number of large corporations implementing world class efficiency improvement programs including NTT, Bharti, AT&T, Singapore Tel, MCI, BT, Hong Kong Tel, IBM, Telstra, Verizon, Bell Canada, Time Warner Telecom, China Unicom, Toyota, Danaher, Saudi Telephone, New Zealand Tel, Helsinki Telephone, GTE, and the Russian Ministry of to name a few. With an under graduate focus in Technology Management, Stephen has completed executive MBA studies at the University of Virginia–Darden School and the Harvard School of Business.  He has been a frequent guest speaker at numerous global conferences on technology, market management and “The Impact of the Financial Market Meltdown”.

YOUR HOSTS:
Montie Design is a collaborative product design and development firm with core competencies in industrial design, mechanical engineering and product commercialization.  The firm has been successful in helping many manufacturing companies develop innovative new product lines and profit centers.

Business Capital Finance provides manufacturing companies with financial solutions including expansion capital, working capital, debt reduction and restructuring.

Register at http://manufacturingprofits.eventbrite.com/
Contact Susan Hasty with Business Capital Finance @ 919.749.5910
Admission: $20

Our address is now:

100 Dominion Dr., Suite 101
Morrisville, NC 2760

Stop in for a quick tour!

[mappress]

[flash_easy_gallery 1 /]

The President of Montie Design has been featured in the September issue of Machine Design magazine.  You can read more by clicking on the image below or visiting Machine Design.com

Emerging RTP Biopharmaceutical Companys Research Shows Promising Results for a New Drug Candidate for Asthma, Sepsis, and for Treatment Following a Bioterrorist Attack using Plague.

Raleigh, N.C., Don Wilson, the CEO of Endacea, Inc., an emerging RTP biopharmaceutical company engaged in developing proprietary adenosine receptor antagonists as drugs for asthma, sepsis, and biodefense, will lead part of the discussion at the November 6, 2008, RTP Tech Event at Goodnights.

Sign up for the event at http://newtech.meetup.com/115/

.

September 25, 2008 Monthly Tech Event: An RTP Business Network Aimed At Increasing Local Business

SIC 38 Instruments and Controls -George King, President, Triangle MicroSystems, a manufacturer of building environmental controls and fuel pump instrumentation.

SIC 36 Electrical Equipment -Bob Luddy, CEO, CaptiveAire, Commercial Kitchen Ventilation Equipment

Each month, executives from local manufacturing firms, product development engineers and people with new business ideas for new products get together to brainstorm ideas for what types of new products may be successful in the RTP market.

Part of the meeting is social networking at a fun place, and part of the meeting is structured around technology trends and markets in the nine high technology manufacturing clusters located in RTP.

It is a huge business community brain-storming session lead by the business owners and executives from both small and big business.

Our Focus On Innovation In The Nine RTP Manufacturing Industrial Sectors

We know that the RTP economy has nine different manufacturing industries. These are:

1. Information technology and instruments
2. Communications services and software
3. Chemicals and plastics
4. Pharmaceuticals and medical technologies
5. Industrial machinery
6. Aerospace
7. Hospitals, labs and specialized medical services
8. Printing and publishing
9. Wood products

You can register for the event at:

http://newtech.meetup.com/115/calendar/8204583/

How to Price your New Product – Understanding Customer Value

Do you deeply understand the value that your products & services bring to your customers? Do they?

Two simple questions, and key input to your pricing strategy. Yet, most firms cannot answer them with confidence and support their answers with data. It gets even harder to answer this question early in new product development when all that is available is a product or service concept. Yet, this question is answerable in many markets in the concept stage of new product and service development.

The Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association invites you to join an evening of networking and learning with Jeff Dupuie, Managing Director of Oakstone Partners:

? Keys to understanding the value your products bring to your customers.
? How to quantify the information.
? How to use customer value model approach to price new products.

Jeff will cover these issues using a case study in how a customer value model (CVM) was used to evaluate a series of new product /service offering concepts that offered the potential of breakthrough performance to customers. The CVM proved to be a useful tool, and in this case, the right tool, to provide insight into which concept offered the most value to customers. The goal of this case study is to provide an overview of the CVM tool and approach, and to demonstrate its use to pricing.

Please join us to exchange points of view, build relationships with your peers and as gain insights from our speaker:

Jeff Dupuie is a Managing Director of OakStone Partners, a local management consulting firm. He has over 15 years experience in management, consulting, and engineering roles. Prior to OakStone, Jeff served as a key member with BearingPoints turn-around consulting unit. Prior to that, he served as a Principal with PRTMs product commercialization unit, leading their Portfolio and Resource Management practices. In industry, he has held commercialization and operations roles with The Ford Motor Company and with Motorolas Semiconductor Products Sector. Jeff earned the Henry Ford Technology Award for outstanding technical achievement while at Ford. Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Michigan.

Who Should Attend

Entrepreneurs, professionals, and decision-makers at all levels who have interest in new product development, including product managers, marketing managers, brand managers, engineers, and business development managers. This event qualifies as two (2) Professional Development Hours toward PDMAs NPDP recertification.
Date: Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Time: Networking & Registration 6-6:45 pm; Presentation and Q&A 6:45 8:00 pm; Pizza and drinks.
Location: MCNC Auditorium, 3021 Cornwallis Rd, Research Triangle Park (Durham), NC 27709.

Fees Early bird: $20 members (PDMA and CED), $30 non-members, $15 students and volunteers. $10 surcharge for walk-in. Check only for walk-in.

More information and registration online at

www.pdma.org/carolinas

or

cjbeale@pdma.org

Organizations in South Carolina are working hard to encourage innovation. If you visit the South Carolinas Council on Competitiveness you can read about the “New Ideas for a New Carolina 2007” contest.

“Tell us your big idea. We want ideas for business that stoke your fire, blow your mind, show your get-up-and-take-charge of-my-dream spirit. Your idea could bring new jobs, new energy, new talents, new life, and new wealth to South Carolina. Help us declare independence from mediocrity. Help us encourage innovators and celebrate the courageous. Help us create a NEW Carolina. New Ideas for A New Carolina South Carolinas Business Idea Competition. So what are you waiting for?”

Does this really encourage innovation in South Carolina? It definitely adds to the popular interest level for innovation. As I read closer, I realized that the prize wasnt for the best new product. The contest is for the best new business idea.

Having a contest for the best business idea (instead of new product) is definitely a good approach. However, I am concerned that this really doesnt strengthen business in South Carolina. The contest helps out individuals who are selected as winners to get publicity for their business concept. It also elevates the concept that product / business development is good for South Carolina.

My suggestion is to provide training before the contest. Teach people how to develop business and product concepts. Then follow up with how to start the business and find funding. Classes in managing the development of a product would also be helpful. Teaching the basics of iterative product design would help a greater number of entrepreneurs and product developers than the contest itself. Assign a volunteer mentor to each entrant for two years. Maybe start with two thousand entries. Offer classes for two years. Then highlight the businesses that have made the most progress (you pick the metric). I will admit that it sounds dangerously close to a reality show. It would be wonderful to see contests like this result in thousands of new businesses launching new products. That would significantly impact the regional economy for decades.

Enabling a passion for introducing new products takes education, mentoring and support from a local design community. As I get to the end of this dialog, I find myself wondering how our chapter (Carolinas chapter) is doing at accomplishing this goal in North and South Carolina. I dont have to wonder long, because our chapter isnt inspiring thousands of new products or new businesses. Is it because North and South Carolina is a bad place for new businesses and products? Is it because we are an inactive chapter? The answer to both is “no”. We have an active chapter in a thriving business community. What can our chapter to do be a product development leader in the Carolinas? Is that too big of a mandate for a local chapter? I dont think so, now we just have to figure out how to do it and have the determination to make it happen.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please dont hesitate to send me an e-mail at montie@montie.com or leave a comment below.

Cheers,
Montie Roland
President, Carolinas Chapter of the PDMA (www.pdma.org/carolinas)
President – Montie Design (www.montie.com)
Home of the NC Product Design Directory

Last month, we had the opportunity to put three groups together to host a joint consultants roundtable. These groups are:

• Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development & Management Association (www.pdma.org/carolinas)
• Carolinas Section of the ASME (http://sections.asme.org/carolina/)
• Triangle Engineering Consultants (www.tecgroup.org)

After a short networking session, we listened to a short keynote talk from Charles Lord (Triangle Advanced Design and Automation — http://www.tadatraining.com) about the subject of integrating consultants into your design process. The presentation, in power point format, is available at All_I_need_is.ppt.

The roundtable discussion include eight consultants and a regional economist (Tom Vass). The discussion was titled “Integrating Consultants into A Well-Run Design Process”. To my surprise, and contray to the efforts of the moderator [me], the discussion kept straying onto the topic of how can consultants work with inventors and early-stage startups.

The result of this discussion was Tom Vasss October 26th blog posting on the Design blogs at blog.Montie.com. Several of the attendees and consultants made suggestions of resources for these types of situations. Bill Sullivan (Carolinas PDMA Chapter member) highlighted the following resources:

From the University of Illinois:

Illinois incubator (Theyve upgraded their facilities!)
http://www.researchpark.uiuc.edu/

Illinois Business Consulting (IBC)
http://www.ibc.uiuc.edu/

From UNC there is an organization that supports Entrepreneurship, but it doesnt seem to have an incubator. Interestingly, its sponsored in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, who is a big supporter of the University of Illinois program and the IBC. I was a Kauffman fellow when I was at U of I. Also, as mentioned on Thursday, UNC has the STAR program for student consulting.

Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (UNC)
http://www.kenaninstitute.unc.edu/centers/cei/?y=home&t=CEI%20Home

STAR – Student Teams Achieving Results (UNC)
http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/Leadership/Companies/STAROverview.cfm

NC State has their technology incubator, but doesnt seem to have a student business consulting organization.

NC State Technology Incubator
http://techincubator.ncsu.edu/index.htm

Duke has an organization that supports Entrepreneurship, but like UNC it doesnt look like they have an incubator. They do have a student consulting organization that specifically mentions its commitment to pro bono consulting to local businesses that dont have the resources to get paid consulting.

Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization (CERC) – Duke
http://cerc.duke.edu/

Fuqua Student Consulting Program (Duke/Fuqua)
http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/programs/studentconsulting/

Creed Huddleston (Vice President of Omnisys Corp — www.omnisyscorp.com) suggested these:

Another organization that is focused on developing entrepreneurship nationwide is the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation out of Kansas City. Their website is full of useful information on all aspects of business operations and development.

http://www.eventuring.org/eShip/appmanager/eVenturing/eVenturingDesktop

One of the things we discussed last night was having an “opportunity fair” type of event on an annual basis. It looks like CED is putting on just such an event in Wilmington in December, with registration discounts prior to 11/3:

Opportunity 2006 Conference:
http://www.cednc.org/conferences/opportunity/2006/

Here are some useful CED (Council for Entrepreneurial Development) links that describe how CED can help and the programs they offer. One item that attracted my attention based on last nights discussion is their Entrepreneurs Only Workshop series, which are lunch-time meetings that give current and budding entrepreneurs useful knowledge on the whole start-up process. Ive also included the Business Stages page since that breaks out their programs by their applicability to a particular phase in the business life cycle.

CED home page:
http://www.cednc.org

Programs and events:
http://www.cednc.org/programs_and_events/

Entrepreneurs Only Workshop:
http://www.cednc.org/programs_and_events/entrepreneurs_only_workshop/

Business Stages:
http://www.cednc.org/programs_and_events/business_stages/

MIT On-line Courses

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Fred Buggie (Strategic Innovations International, Inc. — www.StrategicInnovations.com) suggested:

Every State I know of has an organization charged with the responsibility of inducing large companies to locate operations in their State. Those organizations normally are called “Industrial Development Authorities,” or “Indl Devt. Agencies,” but in the case of the Carolinas, they call themselves something different (so please extend my apologies to Tom Brown for the bum info. I gave him during your meeting). Each of these agencies has as their primary mission the attraction of new industry, so as to increase employment, and taxes paid, in the State; but as their secondary priority they are, to a lesser extent, interested in supporting the growth and prosperity of small companies already located in the State … for the same 2 reasons.

South Carolina

South Carolina Department of Commerce, directed by Chuck Bundy 803/737-0400.
They have done a terrific job over the years, especially in attracting large employers to locate in the Greenville/Spartanburg area.

Charlotte Regional Partnership

Director: Kenny McDonald 704/347-8942
City of Charlotte, NC cooperates with The SC Dept. of Commerce, and York County SC Economic Development Department, right across the State boundary line. The latter is managed by Mark Ferris (803/802-4300) with the City of Charlotte, NC Small Business Development Program

This is an organization sponsored by the North Carolina Department. of Commerce, responsible for supporting small businesses in the 10 NC counties around Charlotte. 704/336-2473.

North Carolina Department of Commerce, Raleigh, NC

The Business & Industry Division is run by Gene Byrd 919/733-4151