At Fusion Engineering Group, we believe successful partnerships start with a seamless journey. As you prepare for your first business trip to Taiwan, we know that navigating a new country, with a new culture, language, and transport system, can feel overwhelming.

This is why we created “Taiwan Ready: Fusion’s Practical Guideline for You.” This handbook is designed specifically for our clients, offering you practical advice on everything from escaping the airport to mastering the business card exchange.

We make sure you arrive informed, comfortable, and ready to focus on the opportunities ahead. Let’s make your trip to Taipei not just productive, but genuinely enjoyable.

🛬 Arrival & First Steps: TPE to Taipei

Upon arrival at Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), we recommend getting some cash. Taiwan uses the New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) As of 2026, 1 USD = 30 NTD. We advise carrying about NTD 2,000 –  3,000 in cash initially, although major businesses accept cards.

Taxis are readily available (~1 hour, roughly NTD 1,400 to Taipei City center), and ideal for heavy luggage.

Or, you can travel affordably and take the Taoyuan Airport MRT (40 min to Taipei Main Station). Tap to pay using a contactless credit card or mobile payment, just ensure you use the same method for tapping in and tapping out.

That said, from our experience, contactless credit cards don’t work yet at every MRT station. Rollout is still in progress and should be done by June 2026.

Even better than using a credit card, buy and load an EasyCard before leaving the airport: it is very convenient for most country-wide public transport, and you can rely on it working at any MRT station.

In case you’re going to visit a factory or office down south, the High Speed Rail (HSR) network will come in handy. Most of our clients would take HSR to whatever city they need to go, then hail a cab from the HSR station to their destination.

 

Taiwan is small enough that we rarely take domestic flights, especially when traveling for work.

🏙️ Navigating the City: Taipei’s Public Transit & Mobility

Taipei boasts one of the world’s cleanest and most efficient public transit systems, centered around the fast, reliable Taipei Metro (MRT). The system covers the entire city and is perfectly complemented by affordable taxis.

Remember two key etiquette rules: 

• always be mindful of Priority Seating (dark blue seats) for those in need.
• strictly No Eating, Drinking, or Chewing Gum is allowed inside stations or on trains. We know people that got fined the full NTD 7,500 (~ 250 USD). You’re allowed to take food and drinks in, but make sure you don’t consume them.

🤝 Business Etiquette & Cultural Insights: Building Trust and Respect

Business culture in Taiwan is rooted in loyalty, a strong work ethic, and a deep respect for hierarchy (much more than in Western countries).

If you can’t avoid disagreements, take them off-line, in separate 1-on-1 meetings.

 

When exchanging business cards, present and receive cards with two hands, examine the card, and store it respectfully. A card with a Traditional Chinese side leaves a positive impression: consider getting some if you often travel to Taiwan.

Greetings are typically a slight nod or a gentle handshake.

☀️ Taiwan’s Climate: Seasons and Packing Essentials

Taiwan’s subtropical zone is defined by high humidity year-round, which is the primary factor impacting your professional wardrobe. For Business Attire, prioritize lightweight, formal, and breathable fabrics to stay comfortable. It’s true that you can’t overdress, but a polo and long pants are good enough for most occasions.

 

For the Hot Season (June–September), expect averages above 28°C (82°F) and be ready for afternoon thunderstorms. During the Cool Season (December–February), while averages are 12°C – 20°C (54°F – 68°F), the wind chill can make it feel significantly colder (5°C – 14°C / 41°F – 57°F); therefore, layers and a warm, windproof jacket are essential. Always pack a compact umbrella, regardless of the forecast.

🍜 Exploring the Local Scene: Food Culture and Dining Tips

Your trip is incomplete without experiencing Taiwan’s gastronomic paradise, starting with a bustling Night Market visit. Must-try items include savory Beef Noodle Soup (牛肉麵), delicate Xiao Long Bao (小籠包 soup dumplings), and Bubble Tea.

When ordering drinks, remember you can easily customize the sweetness and ice levels (e.g., “5 sugar, 3 ice”). Regarding Dining Etiquette, note that meals are often served in a shared dishes style.

Note that Taiwan does not have a tipping culture (service charge is either included or clearly stated in the menu). You may hear the common social icebreaker: “Have you eaten?” (吃飽了嗎? Chī bǎo le ma?).

Never stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice, as this is considered highly taboo.

 

Our favorite Night Markets:

• Nanjichang Night Market 南機場夜市. More authentic than most, in a part of town that’s not overrun by tourists.
• Le Hua Night Market 樂華夜市. Off the beaten path, good choice if you’re adventurous.
• Ningxia Night Market 寧夏夜市. Jensen Huang went there once and it exploded in popularity.
• Raohe Night Market 饒河街 觀光夜市. Touristy, but somehow foreigners like it.

✨ Traveler Basics: Quick Tips & Digital Essentials

To ensure a comfortable and secure stay, start by checking your documentation: confirm your passport validity and have your travel insurance details easily accessible. Although Taiwan is exceptionally safe, keep all key Emergency Contacts (both local and international) readily available.

Digital Essentials: Must-Have Apps

For navigating, communicating, and securing transport, downloading these apps before you arrive is highly recommended:

• Google Maps: Essential for general navigation, finding locations, checking traffic, and initial public transit routes.
• Uber or Bolt: Available as a reliable alternative to hailing a traditional taxi.
• LINE (iOS, Android): This is the primary communication app used by virtually everyone in Taiwan. Many local contacts use it for messaging, both personal and business
• Bus Tracker Taiwan (iOS, Android): If you’re feeling adventurous.
• Google Translation or an AI tool like ChatGPT: These are essential tools for instant translation of menus, signs, and generating nuanced text for verbal communication.

Payment Methods Available

Navigating payments in Taiwan often requires a mix of methods. For the smoothest experience, follow this hierarchy:

• Credit/Debit Cards: Widely accepted at major hotels, department stores, and high-end restaurants. Contactless payments (via card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay) are common in retail and convenience stores.
• EasyCard: Essential for all MRT, bus, and light rail travel, and serves as a fast payment method at convenience stores.
• NTD Cash: a must for local authenticity. Many traditional street food vendors, night market stalls, and small local eateries only accept cash.
• Chinese payment systems like Alipay or WeChat pay rarely work in Taiwan.

Connectivity & Power

Reliable connectivity is easy to secure—whether you buy a local SIM card or activate an eSIM. These can be found at the airport or you can buy them online beforehand.

Taiwan uses the same Power Plugs and Voltage (110V, Type A/B) as North America and Japan, so travelers from other regions will need an adapter.

Many sockets in Taiwan are Type A, meaning they lack a ground connection. Type B plugs won’t fit it, unless you have an adapter. We know someone that managed to snap off the round ground pin on Type B plugs, allowing them to plug into a Type A socket. We don’t recommend that approach, because it negates the ground pin safety.

If you need an adapter, get it at a store in GuangHua, Taipei’s electronics paradise.

 

It’s worth noting that Taiwan is the land of Convenience Stores (7-Eleven and FamilyMart). They’re literally everywhere and offer ATMs, food and drinks and other common items.

Mandarin Basics

• • Please: 請 (Qǐng)
  • Thank You: 謝謝 (Xièxiè)
  • Excuse Me/ Sorry: 不好意思 (Bù hǎoyìsi)
  • Delicious (Food): 好吃 (Hǎochī)
  • No Spicy/ No Chili: 不辣 (Bú là)
  • I Like It: 喜歡 (Xǐhuān)
  • I Don’t Like It: 不喜歡 (Bù xǐhuān)
  • I Don’t Understand: 不懂 (Bù dǒng)

📝 Fusion’s Taiwan Ready: Pre-Trip Checklist

Arrival & Transportation

	Item	Details / Why it matters
☐	Cash on Hand	Carry approximately NTD 2,000 (~$64 USD) for immediate needs (taxis, small vendors).
☐	Currency Exchange Plan	Know where to exchange NTD: Airport exchange counters, city banks, or local ATMs.
☐	EasyCard Purchased	Buy/top-up this smartcard at the airport for all public transport and convenience store purchases. Reload at any MRT station or convenience store.
☐	Contactless Payment Ready	Prepare a contactless credit card or mobile payment service (Apple Pay/Google Pay) for use on the Airport MRT. Must use the same method to tap in and out.

Business & Culture

	Item	Details / Why it matters
☐	Business Cards (Plenty)	Essential for every introduction. Ideally, have one side printed in Traditional Chinese.
☐	Understand “Face”	Remember that saving face is key in all interactions. Avoid direct confrontation.
☐	Know Tipping Protocol	Tipping is not customary in Taiwan (a service charge is often included).

Weather & Attire

	Item	Details / Why it matters
☐	Check Seasonal Weather	Prepare for humidity year-round and 90 F heat during summer; coldness as low as 45 F during winter.
☐	Pack Layers	Essential for winter, as felt temperatures drop significantly.
☐	Lightweight Attire	Prioritize lightweight, breathable, and business casual for business wear (especially in summer).
☐	Compact Umbrella	Taiwan has frequent rainfall. This is a must-have.

Essential Traveler Toolkit

	Item	Details / Why it matters
☐	Passport & Visa Check	Ensure your passport has 6+ months validity and confirm any necessary visa requirements. Even with a US or European passport, you’ll need to fill out this form 3 days before your arrival.
☐	Travel Insurance Documentation	Know your policy number and emergency contact information.
☐	SIM/eSIM/Wi-Fi Plan Secured	Purchase a pre-paid travel SIM card or activate an eSIM upon arrival (available on Kkday or Klook).
☐	Key Apps Downloaded	Install Google Maps, Google Translation, LINE, and Uber/ Bolt before arrival.
☐	Emergency Contacts	Have Fusion’s local contact, your hotel address, and an emergency number from home readily accessible. Write down addresses in Chinese as well, it helps taxi drivers get you to your destination.
☐	Medication Kit	Bring any necessary prescription medications, clearly labeled, along with basic over-the-counter pain relievers or stomach remedies.
☐	Power Adapter	Required if you are not traveling from North America or Japan (Taiwan uses 110V, Type A/B plugs)
☐	Chopstick Etiquette	NEVER stick chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice.
☐	Riding Rules	Do NOT eat, drink, or chew gum on the MRT. You can carry food and drinks.

Enjoy Your Trip to Taiwan

We hope this comprehensive guide has given you the confidence and practical tools needed to approach your trip to Taiwan with ease. At Fusion Engineering Group, we are committed to making your entire experience successful, both in the meeting room and throughout your stay.

 

Should you have any further questions about logistics, local arrangements, or how to best prepare for our meetings, please do not hesitate to reach out to your Fusion Engineering contact. We look forward to welcoming you to Taipei!

A great Product Requirement Document (PRD) unites a team around a project. 

It serves as a blueprint, guiding the development process from start to finish. 

It defines a “finish line” – the point at which the team’s job is complete. 

This post will cover the ingredients of a great PRD, highlighting the key elements that should be included to ensure its effectiveness. We’ll explore the three concepts you need to understand to create a PRD that sets the stage for a successful product development journey. 

This post focuses on each of the key elements of the following statement:

“A great PRD is collaborative, accessible, and prioritised.”

Each section correlates to one of the above aspects. They provide justification and guidance on how to replicate them in your PRDs. 

There is no right answer when it comes to creating a PRD. Every project is different, and the PRD should be tailored to suit the product’s and team’s specific needs and requirements. It’s about understanding the audience and purpose of the PRD for that project and crafting a document that serves as a valuable tool for everyone involved.

Let’s get stuck in.

A great PRD is collaborative 

“A PRD is not a set-in-stone dictate of what a product should be; it is the start of the social process called design, and to varying extents, there is room for negotiation.”

• https://formlabs.com/asia/blog/product-requirements-document-prd-with-template/ 

The primary goal of the PRD is to align everyone involved in the project on the priorities and specifications of the product. Without collaboration, there is no alignment. When the PM dictates the PRD to the rest of the team, we lose the feeling of teamwork. 

While the PM owns the PRD, it should coalesce the views and expertise of all teams involved. 

Collaborative PRDs are better

In our experience, situations where the engineers have taken an active role in the PRD have tended to be more successful. 

A PRD informed by a real engineer’s experience is grounded in reality. This ensures the document is realistic and achievable within the project’s constraints.

The PRD can be seen as a puzzle. The PM is the only one that places the pieces together, but each team/expert in their own right influences their respective piece. 

Everyone’s Resource, Everyone’s Responsibility

As our friend Carl Bettag says;

“It’s not a real thing if it’s not in the PRD”

Keeping the PRD up-to-date and ensuring that all stakeholders are informed helps maintain alignment and fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility among team members.

As engineers, we are responsible for effectively communicating our expertise and views to the PM. We can’t expect the PRD to reflect it if we don’t do that – PMs don’t read minds. 

Balancing Collaboration and Control

Keeping this collaboration in check is essential – the PM needs to decide what’s required and what’s not. It’s their job to listen and understand the views of engineers and then make decisions about how that’s reflected in the final PRD.

A great PRD is accessible

Electrical requirements can inform the mechanical components of the product – that’s why the team needs access to the entire PRD, not just their section.

This sounds obvious, but we’ve worked on projects in the past where the PRD was gatekept, hidden behind layers of confidentiality. It’s usually a symptom of a lack of trust and hampers the team’s ability to do their work. It limits creativity by reducing their input on the project to what they’re directly responsible for. 

Get the level of detail right. 

For your PRD to be read, it needs to be readable.

Nailing the level of detail is the first step towards a readable PRD and a successful project. 

Too detailed and your PRD becomes an Engineering Requirements Document (ERD). Too high-level and it ceases to become useful to the engineers who need to design a product. 

We’ve had the best experience on projects with a PRD and ERD. It might sound redundant, but having the ERD as a more specific and technical version frees up the PRD to stay high-level – like an executive summary of the project’s components.

Key to nailing the level of detail required is appreciating the following:

“The truth is that the uncertainty is never gone — just hidden. There are infinite real-world variables in building software products — in constant motion. Any comprehensive document is laced with hidden assumptions: the API docs are correct, the data is reliable, our polls are unbiased, etc. You only remove uncertainty by shipping.”

• https://rogernort.medium.com/ditch-the-long-prd-797d1a556438

While this is clearly a reference to a PRD for software, the same concept applies to hardware. Examples of similar assumptions in our world are:

• The IP testing goes well, 
• We’re able to pass FCC certification on the first try, 
• Power consumption is as forecasted, etc. 
• The product passes reliability testing 

Internalising this puts a ceiling on the level of detail worth going to. Even the most detailed, dense, descriptive PRD leaves room for uncertainty by making assumptions. It’s an inescapable fact. It’s on you to choose how much uncertainty you’re willing to have (and where you want it). 

Attempting to eliminate uncertainty by getting too specific isn’t just ineffective – it’s impossible.

A great PRD is prioritised 

If everything is a high priority, nothing is a high priority. 

The effectiveness of prioritisation lies in the differentiation between its levels. Make your use of each level of priority consistent and intentional. 

There is a tendency to put a lot in the must-have, only for engineers to point out that we’ll run into problems with all those hard requirements. For example, the product will be too expensive, big, power-hungry, and too late on schedule. 

In real projects, low-priority features often get left out.

This happens because low-priority features aren’t worth enough to the company (otherwise, they’d be a higher priority). Revenue is king; companies run and grow on it. Low-priority features would add unacceptable cost or delay to the project and are often promptly slashed by the C-suite.

Prioritisation allows for flexibility

The PRD can suffer from being a rigid document in a dynamic world. Engineering and product design is constantly moving and adapting to new influences. Deadlines slip.

Properly implemented prioritisation in the PRD allows for flexibility within the PRD. Despite changing what’s written in the PRD, priorities mean there’s a range of success rather than one exact version. 

Flexibility in the PRD also helps in managing trade-offs between competing priorities. For example, suppose a new feature is proposed mid-development. In that case, the team can assess its impact on the project timeline, budget, and overall goals and decide whether to incorporate it into the current iteration or save it for a future release.

Conclusion 

A well-crafted Product Requirement Document is more than just a list of features; it’s a strategic blueprint that unites a team around a project. It clarifies project priorities, defines a clear “finish line” for engineers, and serves as a north star for the whole team. 

Three key concepts must be understood and implemented to create a great PRD: collaboration, accessibility, and prioritisation.

• Collaboration is essential – A PRD shouldn’t be a dictatorial document but the start of a collaborative design process. 
• Accessibility ensures that the PRD is readable and available to everyone involved in the project. 
• Prioritisation is essential to focus on what matters most. By distinguishing between priority levels and using them intentionally, resources are used effectively on the most critical tasks.

By understanding the importance of collaboration, accessibility, and prioritisation, teams can create PRDs that are valuable tools for guiding successful product development journeys. Let’s aim for PRDs that unite teams, provide clear direction, and set the stage for successful outcomes.

This is the final installment of a 3-part series on our project management system. 

In the first part, we covered the core ideas that guide our project management process – communication, documentation, and efficiency.

Our second post covered our communication tools and processes. 

This post covers all the other vital tools in our project management process, specifically:

• Calendars
• Time trackers
• Task managers
• Note-taking apps

Rather than focusing on the specific tools we use, we’ve classified them as shown above. The idea here is that whether you’re using Google Calendar, Fantastical, Outlook, or any other app doesn’t matter – what matters is that you have a calendar. Heck, you could be using a paper calendar for all we care!

We’ll still mention at the bottom of each section the specific tool we use and why, but the focus will lie on what the tool enables.

The motivation behind this is to pull the focus away from the obsession over specific tools. So many provide minor improvements on non-core functionality that you could spend an eternity optimizing the tools you use. 

That’s not what’s important. What’s important is the quality and efficiency of the work the tools enable. That’s the point – they’re just tools. 

So don’t obsess over the small details. Find some that work well enough for you and master them. Over time and with use, you’ll adapt your use of them to fit your workflow perfectly. 

Calendars

The calendar is an invaluable tool. We treat it as the single source of truth about our time. As far as we’re concerned, if it’s not on the calendar, it isn’t happening. 

This helps with a few things. 

Firstly, we don’t have to think about how we will spend our time. This removes the cognitive overhead of finding a task to work on in a given time. We can sit down and work on whatever task our calendar indicates. 

It also helps with scheduling things. Take the scenario of an opportunity coming up – a meeting with someone interesting, a dinner, an event, etc.

Before we had a tight schedule in our calendar, we’d usually say yes on the spot and then try to fit it into our time after the fact. This meant shuffling appointments, sacrificing work time, or declining the opportunity after the fact – a big no-no in our books. 

Instead, we can pull up our calendars on our phones and tell at a glance whether we have the capacity. We can make that judgment call then and there whether the opportunity is worth shifting things if it requires it or if we’re just swamped with work at that time and can’t make it. 

Because of this, our calendars must be accurate and available at all times. Here’s how we ensure this:

1. We share our calendars across the team. This means anyone can access someone else’s schedule at any time. I can check their calendar to see their schedule if I need to contact an engineer. If they’ve spent the entire week in a factory and are in the middle of their only focus block, I won’t disturb them – it can wait for another time. This often means we can forgo “Monday lookahead” meetings that accomplish the same goal less efficiently. 
2. We schedule everything. Our jobs rely on our ability to do deep work, which relies on having time in our calendar. We reserve time to spend in deep work in our calendar, blocking it out ahead of time to ensure no one takes it. It doesn’t stop there – we schedule everything, including travel time, social time, workouts, dinners, lunch, and training. 

Time trackers

We started to use time trackers out of necessity. We were billing clients by the hour, and to be as transparent as possible, we started tracking the billable hours spent on each topic. This started as an arduous task, but we came to love it over time. We’re confident that we’d track our time even if we didn’t have to for client billing. Here’s why:

Past tracking enables future predictions. 

We’re descriptive about how the time we track is spent, going beyond simply the project. We tie our time to specific tasks within our time management software, which lets us get a breakdown of time spent in each work phase for each project. Combine this with a projection of what you think each phase will take at the beginning and a thorough review at the end, and you’ve got the perfect environment to hold yourself accountable for time spent throughout a project. 

This whole process might seem like a lot, but it keeps us accountable to ourselves. In the end, it pays for itself.

It lets us accurately predict how long a project will take — our clients appreciate a reliable schedule. 

It allows us to see exactly where the delays came from and eliminate them for future projects. 

The real magic of time tracking is in how it relates to our task management software, Jira…

Image of Harvest and Jira integration here 

42nd lets us open a Jira task and start a timer right there. This is great for tracking time spent on a project very granularly. For example, when designing a PCB, we can track time spent on schematics, libraries, layouts, reviews, build management, and more.

Once it’s time to send out invoices, we quickly gather all the info related to each client, review invoices, and send them out.

Task managers

When we say task manager, we mean Jira. Although it’s not strictly a task management tool, we use it as such. 

While we stand by the idea that your exact tool doesn’t matter as much as you probably think, we struggle to separate the two in this section. That’s because Jira is so ingrained in our process.

In the five years that we’ve been in business, we’ve tried a ton of task managers (Trello, Jira, Asana, Gdocs), but Jira has stuck among all of them, and for good reasons. The tool is powerful but humble at the same time. If you don’t need all the bells and whistles, you can use it in “basic mode”.

Furthermore, our workflow with Jira is something we’ve perfected over time and is very specific to how we work. We’ll now run through a Gantt chart project template we frequently use to illustrate how critical Jira is to our process. 

Our Jira template:

We have a folder structure for every new project so that files can go into the proper” bucket” anytime we need to add new files to the project’s main folder.

Gantt chart image

The Gantt chart in the picture is used as a high-level starting point for designing a new device. It is separated into sections as below:

• Project assessment
  • The project’s PRD and all requirements are gathered from the client
• Components selection 
  • The right components are chosen for the project based on the PRD
• Schematic and Layout Design
  • This is where the PCB design takes place, along with design reviews and some back and forth with the client where needed
• Firmware Design
  • If any component needs to be programmed, the coding part of the project will be included in this section
• Mechanical Design
  • An enclosure, testing fixture or any feature needed to support the PCB is included here
• Design Review Checklists
  • A well-developed checklist covering all the three disciplines described above is run by a team member who spent the least amount of time on the project (when possible)
• RFQ, FAB, and Assembly
  • Once the files are ready for manufacturing, all the effort required to make this project come to life will be added here. These can be sending Requests for Quotes, handling Purchase Orders for materials, and answering engineering questions from the suppliers.
• Test and Debug
  • A test plan must be created after the design starts (after the Component Selection section). It can be updated and improved as the design progresses, and it should be ready when the supplier starts manufacturing parts.

Make a note about the missing parts 

Using our experience from past projects, we can estimate how long it will take for each of these sections to be completed. Once each task’s start and end dates have been added on Jira, the Gantt chart will give you an overview of the project schedule to provide to your client and team.

When the schedule slips, the end dates for the tasks that need more time should be updated. The PM must note these events and schedule a debriefing meeting when the project is complete. This will help better understand what caused the delay and how it can be prevented.

Documentation/note-taking tools

Taking notes is critical when you’ve got as many meetings and ongoing projects as we do. 

We live our note-taking life by the mantra: what’s not documented didn’t happen.

We like writing something down as freeing up the space it occupies in our brain to do other stuff. This logic is similar to what we covered in the calendars section – simply writing stuff down means you’re not spending brain energy remembering it. 

David Allen talks about this in his book Getting Things Done. 

We discussed how this came up in the first post of this series, where an intern was working on getting client information into a new CRM (client relationship manager). Because we’re so vigilant about taking notes in meetings, he could go through 5 years’ worth of notes of everyone we’d spoken to formally. 

When we took these notes, the purpose wasn’t clear. Instead, it revealed itself later. This is a key tenant of our note-taking philosophy: the use of notes doesn’t need to be clear when taking them. 

Here are a few of the core things we record religiously:

1. Meetings and engagements. As mentioned above, we record everything. There are limits to this – our priority is to respect the privacy of our clients and key stakeholders. Within those limits, however, we record as much as we can. Another key reason for taking notes at meetings is that people who can’t attend the call can get an idea of what was covered without needing another debriefing call. 
2. Projects. We maintain mega-notes for all projects we work on. These notes include research, any relevant information, screenshots, etc. By ensuring all information relevant to a project is stored in the same place, we can be sure we’re not missing anything. This way, if someone needs to bring themselves up to speed, there’s a single source of truth to consult before asking the project lead any questions.
3. Policies, procedures, and practices. We’ve built up cohesive, easy-to-follow standard operating procedures documents for everything we do recurringly. This means that any new joins to the team or project can come in and get started as soon as possible. These standard operating procedures (or SOPs) have topics ranging from highly technical engineering tasks to standard getting set up with company accounts for new hires – nothing is beneath an SOP. If you think you could forget it or someone else might find it helpful, create an SOP.

Finishing up…

Navigating the complexities of project management, especially within small engineering teams, demands a blend of strategy, adaptability, and foresight. 

Through this series on “Project Management for Small Engineering Teams,” we’ve delved deep into the intricacies of prioritizing tasks, optimizing time, and fostering collaborative environments.

This serves our holy trinity of project management concepts: communication, documentation, and efficiency. 

As leaders and team members at Fusion Engineering Group, Inc., our journey isn’t just about implementing tools or following methodologies—it’s about understanding the unique dynamics of our team, anticipating challenges, and harnessing opportunities. 

Remember, the heart of successful project management lies not just in processes but in people—our most valuable asset. Here’s to continued growth, learning, and excellence in our endeavors!

To wrap up, here are some questions to ask at your next team meeting to start a conversation about optimizing your project management process:

1. Is there an opportunity in your company to reduce the number of meetings? To try this, pick one weekly meeting and test whether you can go without it for a month – correspond over email instead. 
2. Challenge yourself to leave the next meeting you start zoning out of. If it’s not practical for you, it’s useless for anyone else. Get some other work done. 
3. What processes are people constantly asking you for guidance on? Create a standard operating procedure for it. 
4. When was the last time the most junior member of your team spoke up at a big meeting? 
5. How many hours of deep work did you get done this week? You should be able to consult your calendar and tell quickly. 

In the realm of small business ownership, every new hire is a pivotal decision. When you’ve got a small team, every new hire has the potential to impact the dynamic for better or worse. 

This blog post is a guide on ensuring your hiring elevates your company rather than dragging it down. 

We’ve aimed this post specifically at what we know best – small engineering firms. That’s because we know the hiring strategy is different when you’ve got 500 employees vs. 3 – because we’ve done both. 

We’ve got 5 years of experience managing a dynamic team of projects in all sorts of industries, and we’re ready to share what we’ve learned. 

Table of Contents:

• Finding someone
• Interviewing 
• Onboarding

Finding someone – who are you trying to hire?

When it comes to hiring, defining your needs and objectives is the first crucial step. Before crafting a job description, you need to be sure about what you want. This is different for every company and situation, but the steps below are designed to prompt thinking in what we think are the key areas. 

Specific needs, specific skills.

Without understanding what need is being filled by this new hire, it is impossible to determine the right candidate. Clarity around roles and responsibilities starts with you, the employer. 

Things to consider:

1. What specific jobs will this hire be responsible for?
2. Skills are required for those jobs?
   1. Hard
   2. Soft

For example – if you’re hiring for a front-facing job, communication skills will be hugely important. In a role where the candidate would deal with clients and key stakeholders, their communication and presentation skills directly reflect your company.

Contrastingly, if the need you have is purely technical (say, assistance with PCB board design), there’s almost no requirement for external communication skills, but the candidate’s PCB design skills are paramount.

How urgent is your need?

The urgency of the company’s needs will inform your candidate selection. 

If the needs are not immediate but anticipated as a result of growth, you can likely afford to take a longer time horizon into account. This is an example where a more junior hire might work best, as you’ve got the time and resources to train and get them perfectly integrated into the team. It’s an investment, but it’s worth it if you’ve got the time to realize the gains.

On the other hand, in a situation where you urgently need specific skills – for example, you’ve taken on a project that requires x specific technical skill, you don’t have that luxury. You need to find a senior candidate with the required skills and get them working fast. 

The size/stage of your company will also influence your thinking here. If you’re a small, 2 man band, there might be more pressing needs. Business management skills? Marketing? On the other hand, being small means you’ve got the opportunity to grow with your employees. This is a fantastic chance for your company to flourish alongside its workers. In our experience, this investment in people is what builds truly strong companies.

Company fit – fill the gaps

Lastly, take some time to consider fit. In our experience, people spend too much time thinking of technical abilities and not enough time considering fit. Fit extends beyond a resume’s qualifications or a candidate’s technical skills. Instead, it revolves around a more profound question: what kind of people thrive in your work environment? Moreover, what sort of people is your work environment missing?

This is especially important in smaller companies, where one new hire has more potential impact on your team dynamics. Instead of thinking of this as a risk, view it as an opportunity – you’ve got a chance to really improve on the aspects of your team that are lacking.

A helpful way to start understanding what your team needs is doing a “gap analysis.”

Every team has its unique cognitive landscape, with each member contributing distinct thinking patterns and strengths. Consider if there are any missing pieces in your team’s collective thought process. Perhaps you need:

• Someone adept at generating ideas on the fly.
• A detail-oriented individual who ensures no stone is left unturned.
• A cultural ambassador who embodies and promotes the company’s values, ensuring a sense of identity and purpose.
• A negotiator or conflict resolution expert.
• A team player and collaborator:

There are, of course, many more to consider. Each team dynamic is vastly different, and it is impossible to break it down into components like this. Take the time, consider yours. It will make the following steps of this post much simpler. 

The job description

Now that we’ve got a good understanding of what we want out of this new hire, we can start building the job description. If you’ve taken proper care and spent some time considering and thinking about the items above, this bit should be easy.

From the perspective of the new hire, the job description is critical. It allows a good understanding of what is expected from both parties and a starting point for success for the starter.

One thing to remember is to make a distinction between nice-to-have aspects and must-have aspects for your candidate. For example, we identified in our internal discussions that it would be great if our candidate had communication proficiency in Chinese – we ended up deciding that this is a nice-to-have skill rather than a must-have.

 

The interview

Nice work! You’ve found a candidate to interview for the position. Now, find another…

We would recommend interviewing at least (3)? Candidates for one position. This way, you can understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, helping you appreciate the one you go with more. It’s also a great chance to practice your interviewing skills. 

As every company requirement, candidate, and interview is different, we won’t outline specific questions for you to ask. Instead, this section provokes thought about the objective of the question itself. From there, we can work backward and build a question that targets what we want to understand about the candidate. 

This section is broken down into 3 sections that map well to the thinking we did above. 

• Cultural questions – the who
• Technical questions – the what
• Situational questions – the how

Our cultural questions assess who the candidate is.

Our technical questions assess what the candidate knows.

Our situational questions assess how the candidate works, learns, and thinks. We’ve put this section in the middle of the Venn diagram above because in many ways it’s the “glue” or the intersection of everything else.

We’ve also provided some example questions in each section, but we stress the importance of developing new questions yourself. The questions in each section should be treated as an example of how we think about our questions. When coming up with your own questions, treat each question as a tool to deepen your understanding of the candidate. Think first about what you want to understand about them, and then form a question around that. 

An excellent way to approach this would be to consider the answers you gave to the prompts in the previous section and form questions to gain deeper insight into specific aspects of those answers – if you wanted a strong communicator who could deal well under pressure, use questions to put them on the spot and test their ability to communicate effectively. Contrastingly, if you’re after a hyper-technical PCB designer, use your questions to dig into the depth of their understanding. 

Lastly, it’s important to note the following: Sometimes, the way the candidate reacts to the question is just as important as their final answer. 

If you ask them a technical question they don’t know the answer to, don’t write them off on the spot. It’s an excellent opportunity to see how they handle an unfamiliar situation. Do they get overwhelmed and shut down? Do they make something up? Or do they handle it with grace and confidence, answering the question to the best of their ability without fabricating an answer? Often, their behavior in these situations is more important than their existing knowledge base.

Cultural – the who:

We recommend starting here as it’s a great way to ease into the interview process. Here, you should explore the candidate’s values, work style, and compatibility with the company culture. This is about assessing who the candidate is. 

The thinking you did in section 1 about the sort of person your company needs right now will make these questions simple but not easy.

How can you ask a question to determine whether this candidate fills your identified gap?

Examples:

• Tell me about a time when you had to collaborate with a diverse group of individuals. How did you ensure effective communication and mutual understanding among team members?
• What do you do outside of work?
• “How do you typically handle feedback and criticism?”
• Describe a work environment or company culture where you felt most productive and comfortable. What aspects of that environment were particularly appealing to you?
• Describe a situation where you had to prioritize competing tasks or projects. How did you decide which ones were most important?
• Can you give an example of a time when you took the initiative to improve a process or situation in your previous workplace? What was the outcome?
• How do you approach work-life balance? Can you share an example of how you’ve managed your time and responsibilities to maintain a healthy balance?
• What role do you believe company culture plays in driving business success? Can you give an example of how a positive or negative culture impacted a company you’ve worked for?
• Describe a time when you had a disagreement with a colleague or supervisor about a work-related issue. How did you approach the situation to find a resolution?

Technical – the what:

We’d encourage you to think about technical ability last. While obviously important, fit and propensity to learn are much more important to us. If the candidate has limited experience in a technical field but has shown capability and interest in picking up new skills, we get excited. 

Obviously, the technical questions you ask are hyper-dependent on the industry, skills, and company needs. Our engineering firm does primarily electrical and mechanical engineering work, so we’ve provided examples that work for us. We’ve also kept the examples here to brief skills for the same reason.

Mechanical Engineering questions:

• CAD software experience
• PLM and PDM tools experience
• DFM, DFA experience
• Materials knowledge (metallurgy, plastics, composites)
• Quality Control, FAI, SOPs
• Manufacturing (machining, 3D printing, sheet metal, injection molding, casting)

Electrical Engineering questions:

• CAD software experience
• Comm buses experience
• Digital electronics experience
• Analog electronics
• Sensors
• USB protocols
• Software development experience
• High-speed signal routing
• General PCB layout guidelines
• RF theory
• Types of antennas and when to use them
• PCB impedance control
• UART, serial interfaces

Situational – the how:

Here, there will be a lot of variation depending on your company’s needs.

We like to think of these types of questions as the bits between the who and the what. You’re trying to get a feel for how the candidate thinks.

That’s easier said than done, but here’s a few strategies that have worked for us in the past:

• Make them make an estimate something. For example, how many credit cards do you think there are in the United States? Here, the final answer isn’t that important (to an extent). We’re more focused on their assumptions and their justifications for those assumptions.
• What have you changed your mind on recently, and why?

Another excellent strategy for understanding someone’s mind is…

Let them ask questions

It’s essential to let the candidate ask some questions, too. But don’t tune out – the interview isn’t over yet. 

This is an incredible opportunity to asses how the applicant approaches learning about something new, their ability to prepare ahead of time, etc. 

An applicant who asks no questions probably isn’t someone you want on your team. 

Integration/onboarding

Congrats, you’ve made a new hire. What next…

Protect your company. 

• Contract
• Sending the offer
• Code of conduct.

For each of the above steps, we recommend seeking legal help. It’s a safer alternative and makes protecting your company a priority – as it should be.

Integration

The better your job description, the easier this phase will be. The onboarding employee will better understand your expectations and vice versa. 

Having said that, a robust onboarding process can be executed mainly by the newly hired person, saving you a lot of time.

Here are some starting points to make this process seamless in your company:

• Have an archive of training videos. They go a long way as they can be used to practice on mock/straightforward projects, and the newly hired can shape their workflow to what is proven to be the most efficient way.
• Have your new employee write down comments, questions, and thoughts about the training material.
• Host 1-on-1 weekly/bi-weekly sessions. On a regular basis, have a meeting with your new employee to hear your feedback about any aspect of his/her experience so far. This could be interpersonal relationships with colleagues, difficulties, or suggestions for improvement.
• Together with your new employee, review the feedback he/she has on your training docs.

You’re done!

Hiring in small businesses is a big deal. A new team member can really change how things work. This guide is here to help your hires make your company better, not worse.

We’re focusing on small engineering firms because we’ve been there, managing projects in different industries for five years. We want to share what we’ve learned.

Every step matters, from figuring out what you need to write the job ad to interviews and settling in the new hire. It’s not just about skills; it’s about finding the right fit for your team.

Investing time in finding the right person pays off. Remember, a good hire helps your company grow. So take your time and make it count.

Communication is power.

This is especially true in the realm of engineering, where precision and collaboration are essential. At Fusion Engineering Group, we recognize the value of linguistic diversity in enhancing our ability to connect, innovate, and collaborate effectively.

We’re excited to share a small piece of our Chinese language learning in this blog post. This linguistic endeavor has broadened our horizons and empowered us to foster stronger relationships with our partners in Taiwan and deliver better results for our clients.

Our path to mastering Chinese for engineering began with studying full-time in Taiwan. We started by immersing ourselves in the fundamentals of the Chinese language, gradually building a solid foundation in spoken and written communication. Our commitment extended beyond mere vocabulary acquisition; we delved into the intricacies of Chinese characters, particularly those relevant to engineering terminology. 

Over time, learning Chinese evolved from a personal endeavor into a strategic advantage for our company. Communicating proficiently in the language has opened doors to enhanced collaboration and efficiency.

As our projects often involve close partnerships with clients and stakeholders in Taiwan, language is no longer a barrier inhibiting progress. By understanding and conversing in Chinese, we can grasp nuances and intricacies that might have been lost in translation. This, in turn, empowers us to work seamlessly, make quicker decisions, and align our strategies more effectively.

This post will showcase our language progress and illustrate how it helps us serve our clients. We’ll use the example project of a portable fan to showcase how the ability to communicate in Chinese empowers us along each of the following steps of a project:

• Design of EE components of our fan
• Design of ME aspects of our fan

It’s important to note that the designs in this article are over-simplifications of what any actual design files would look like – our goal is to showcase the development of our language skills, not educate our audience on the intricacies of the Chinese language in the field of engineering. 

If you are interested in learning more about the Chinese language as a whole, check out a selection of the resources we found helpful in our journey:

• An Intro to Pinyin
• A course in contemporary Chinese
• Pleco and using its flashcards.
• ZhongZhong Chinese popup dictionary

Step 1: Mechanical Engineering Design

Our mechanical engineers collaborate with other teams to complete the portable fan’s design. Specifically, our focus is on refining the casing design. Our manufacturing partners in Taiwan require these final designs for production so they can move forward.

Because our ME team can communicate in Chinese and English, sharing ideas between our English-speaking design collaborators and our Chinese-speaking manufacturing partners couldn’t be easier. 

The image above is an oversimplified example of such an annotated design. That said, these benefits translate into real-world advantages.

Having a Mechanical Engineering lead who can speak Chinese is great. A Mechanical Engineer who can drive to the manufacturing facility we collaborate with is even better. 

This proximity enables us to keep our clients well-informed and up-to-date, with the ability to address challenges precisely. Being on-site eliminates the need to communicate across the extensive North Pacific Ocean and a 15-hour time difference. We serve as our clients’ ears, eyes, and hands, enabling us to address any issues efficiently.

Step 2: Electrical Engineering Design

Our electrical engineering team plays a pivotal role in developing our portable fan, focusing on the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) that houses the critical internal components.

Precision is paramount as we begin designing the casing for the electrical components. Ensuring that the size of our PCB aligns perfectly with our initial designs is essential to the success of our project.

Much like our mechanical engineering counterparts, our electrical team benefits immensely from our proficiency in Chinese.

Communicating seamlessly with our local PCB manufacturers is a game-changer in collaboration. It allows us to convey our requirements and specifications with clarity and precision, ensuring that the PCB meets the exact standards we’ve set.

Our proficiency in Chinese acts as a bridge, enabling us to work hand in hand with our manufacturing partners. The result is PCBs that consistently meet the standards we’ve set for our projects.

This synergy of language and technical expertise improves the quality of our work and strengthens the bonds between our team and our manufacturing partners.

Final thoughts

Beyond streamlined designs and efficient manufacturing processes, our ability to communicate culturally has enriched our relationships.

From sharing meals and stories to technical collaboration, our Chinese language skills have become bridges connecting us with our partners on a deeper level.

The ability to head to the local 餐廳(restaurant) and share a bowl of noodles over a casual conversation has proven invaluable.

Fusion Engineering Group stands poised to continue delivering exceptional results for our clients and elevating the impact of linguistic diversity in the world of engineering.

TLDR:

• Using a 3D mouse fixed the repetitive strain injury that was developing in my wrist from long sessions of 3d design.
• While it took some time to get used to, the increased level of efficiency and the longer duration of my sessions has made the switch immensely valuable.
• The mouse I use is compatible with most CAD software, and can even be used for non-design purposes (gaming and browsing of the internet)
• The benefits aren’t limited to navigation and manipulation of objects in the CAD software. I was able to create my own custom macros, which increased my workflow efficiency even more.

Why bother?

At the beginning of my career I was doing CAD/CAM design full-time. It didn’t take long for me to realize that some repetitive hand movements were hitting me hard.

Rotating a 3D model on your preferred CAD environment is cumbersome and awkward. If you spend enough time doing it, you have likely developed some finger or wrist pain.

Zoom in and out while navigating a drawing also felt very inefficient.

The reason for this is simple –  The simple keyboard and mouse combo is not built for interacting with things in 3 dimensions.

By switching to technology specifically designed for my application I was able to revolutionise my workflow.

Now, looking back, I don’t know how I managed it before.

A builder wouldn’t select a hammer for tightening a nut on a screw – the tool isn’t meant for that job. So why do so many engineers insist on using inferior tools for their work?

The solution

 

The SpaceMouse from 3Dconnexion in its wireless variant is a very simple device.

It features a controller shaped like a squeezed tiny cylinder and two side buttons. A long lasting battery makes it perfect for those who design a lot on their portable workstations.

It’s just as simple as it looks. Think of the device controller as if you are holding your 3D model with your fingers in real life:

You want to zoom in to inspect an inner radius, rotate the model or move it along its axis? Just pull the controller towards you, rotate it, pull it up or push it down.

Whatever CAD system you use, 3Dconnexion offers a variety of add-ins for Fusion360, Siemens NX, PTC Creo, Catia.

I personally don’t use it on Windows Explorer, but you may give it a try with other software or even video games! 

These folks at 3Dconnexion have been around for a while – funny enough, they are still offering it at the same price I paid for it back in 2014.

You can tell how far they went by looking at their first production device, the SpaceMouse Classic that went into production in 1993:

It doesn’t stop there

I kept reaching out to my keyboard with my left hand because I still had some Solidworks shortcuts set on my keyboard.

In seeing the benefits of the device, I really wanted to move away from my keyboard as much as possible.

That’s when I got a SpaceMouse Pro.

It allowed me to reduce the back and forth between 3D mouse and keyboard by moving the shortcuts to the fully customisable radial menus associated with the side buttons of the controller.

Although more expensive than the lower range models, it does pay itself back in the long run.

I use this mouse frequently with Solidworks and Altium Designer and I now have it perfectly configured for all the features I use the most in both environments.

I’ve been using it for a while now and I can tell it’s a durable device that will stay with you for years.

This model has a lot more buttons than its little brother and all of them can be assigned to any keyboard key or shortcut.

The German manufacturer also offers a top-class device with more buttons and a display to show what tasks are assigned to the buttons.

Create and customize your macros

Keyboard shortcuts made of more than one key stroke are called macros on 3DxWare, the 3Dconnexion software.

You can create, edit and assign macros to any button of your choice. They can also be included in a radial menu.

Disclaimer: some stroke combinations were not working at all.

This was happening because the software simulated these strokes as if the keys were pressed simultaneously. 

It wasn’t just me apparently and I had to use a not-so-conventional workaround to fix this issue.

The dev team got this fixed and it’s now possible (and recommended) to add pause between each stroke.

No more hardcoding!

    Written in collaboration with Maggie Durocher.

TL;DR

• To mitigate supply chain woes, companies should diversify suppliers, increase inventory levels, look for alternative products or materials, improve forecasting, and build solid relationships with suppliers.
• Effective BOM management is crucial to identify sole-sourced components and find second or third sources for every passive component.
• Buying more parts in advance and storing them can reduce the risk of stockouts and reduce BOM cost.
• Just-in-time inventory management is not always effective for SMEs, who may not have leverage on suppliers.
• Drop-in replacements, dual overlapped footprints, and other strategies can shield customers from supply chain headaches.

 

If you work in an industry where manufacturing is a central process, you’ve likely had to deal with supply chain shortages. The last two years have been particularly painful; even large companies have been forced to redesign their products when certain components go out of stock. This is never a good thing – it means incurring delays and additional costs, which eventually impact the bottom line. Worst case scenario, product launches may be scrapped altogether, burning a lot of funds for no positive outcome.

As Elon Musk found out himself, “The supply chain stuff is really tricky.” (he doesn’t mince his words).

It’s critical to insulate ourselves against the potential downsides of supply chain. That’s because of the huge factor that supply chain management plays in manufacturing a hardware product.

At Fusion Engineering Group we found that the following actions help mitigate or resolve supply chain woes:

Diversify suppliers

By having multiple suppliers for the same product or component, companies can reduce the risk of being affected by a shortage caused by a single supplier.

In the consumer product space, this translates into effective BOM (Bill of Materials) management. The BOM lists all the individual components needed to build a specific product, along with their main characteristics.

For a modern smartphone, the BOM can have more than 1000 lines. The PCB alone, as you can see from this picture, is packed tightly with a slew of tiny parts. The unavailability of just one of these critical components can cause cascading delays across the entire project.

 

Here below we can see a BOM extract from a Chinese PCB supplier, where each line describes a component on the PCB.

By having a hard look at your product BOM, you can identify components that are sole-sourced vs single-sourced. A sole-sourced component can only be obtained by a specific supplier. It may even have been designed as a custom part, making it impossible to buy from a different supplier.

In today’s environment, it’s wise to keep your options open. If one supplier bites the dust, you should have another one ready to replace it. Question every sole-sourced part in your BOM, and see if you can replace it with a part more widely available.

On a typical circuit board, you should aim for having at minimum two (and hopefully more ) sources for every passive component. For active components instead, second-sourcing decisions are more complex.

While the design process moves on, review the BOM on a weekly/monthly basis: this will help you catch problems early on and adjust your procurement strategy accordingly.

Increase inventory levels

If money is available, it might be wise to simply buy more in advance (and possibly score a discount). Parts would then be stored at a trusted partner location, or simply kept at your company warehouse, should you have one.

Another strategy worth mentioning is  JIT (just-in-time) inventory management, where inventory is kept to a minimum.

 

JIT is all the rage these days. No reason to jump on the bandwagon though. JIT has its own challenges, particularly for many of our clients that are SME. Such a company typically doesn’t’ have lots of leverage on suppliers, exacerbating the common issues found with JIT:

1. Heavy Dependence on Suppliers
2. Vulnerability to Disruptions
3. Increased Cost of Inventory
4. Risk of Stockouts

JIT is effective when implemented correctly, particularly in industries with stable demand and well-developed supply chains. That’s usually not the case for SME.

More often than not, money is tight and buying more in advance is not an option. In that case, here are a few steps that SME can follow:

• Automate the sourcing process to accurately track inventory level and material availability
• Invest in data analytics to improve material management and to mitigate the risks  
• Implement a logistics contingency plan to avoid large scale disruptions

Bottom line result: an optimal inventory level without overly stress on the cash flow and an increased level of efficiency.

Look for alternative products or materials

There are multiple strategies we’ve been using to shield our customers from supply chain headaches:

1. Drop-in replacements. These parts can be used while keeping everything else the same. Say one USB connector isn’t available anymore, but you found one that’s essentially the same. Just edit the BOM with the new part and you’re good to go.
2. If the same part comes in different footprints, allow for both of them on the PCB. This way, they can be swapped out while keeping firmware almost identical. This trick can save you time and money down the road. However, it could make the board bigger
3. Allow for dual, overlapped footprints on a PCB, while not enlarging the board itself. Compared to the point above, this strategy lets you choose parts from different vendors. The pool of available components gets larger.
4. A subsystem made of individual parts might be replaced by an integrated module that performs the same function. This is the case for certain voltage regulators. Incidentally, you may even reduce board size by using an integrated module like the examples below.

Overall, foster resilience: build flexibility into the supply chain by having backup plans in place for disruptions and contingencies.

Improve forecasting

As product development progresses and gets closer to mass production, market conditions may change. This in turn will change demand for your product.

A typical smartphone’s development cycle takes about 2 years. There are a lot of things that can happen in that timeframe.

Timeline and project management is key here. This is a broader topic for another blog post (stay tuned). Suffice to say: your suppliers will enjoy working with you and give you preferential treatment if you can stick to your schedule.

Build solid relationships with suppliers

Transparency is key. As per the last point above, develop strong business relationships where both sides are invested in the project and want to make it a success.

A supplier that trusts you will advise ahead of time about potential shortages, so you can plan accordingly. The last thing you want is to be left out to dry.

Lastly, make sure you use the chips you buy. Here’s why:

Chip supplier XYZ will be happy if you buy ICs from them, and will be even happier if you actually ship high-volume devices with their ICs in them. Such a device will undoubtedly be torn down by some enthusiasts, in turn giving visibility to supplier XYZ.

 

TL;DR

• Use a double seal design with appropriate materials like O-rings or adhesives
• Use cable overmolding and select connectors that are rated for the desired level of protection
• Consider adding ventilation to equalize pressure and prevent moisture buildup
• If glue is used, ensure surfaces are clean before application. Even better, sand them off
• Follow manufacturer recommendations for connector design and mating process
• Consider the assembly process and how it could impact the weakest points of the design
• Choose cables that are rated for the desired level of protection and keep in mind that cables may only reach the advertised IP rating when mated with another cable

Your earphones that pump rock music to boost your workout are necessarliy sweat-proof, and the “water resistance” capability of your smartphone is likely what made it stand out from other options.

But what do these nebulous terms mean? There are many different terms in the industry for what concerns waterproofing, and its often hard to distinguish between them.

IP rating introduction

As you read above, Ingress Protection (IP) is the main index for certifying how a device is protected against solids and liquids. This rating follows the standard IEC 60529.

Although ingress protection is the correct nomenclature, in most designs we’re simply interested in liquids protection. That’s why you want to focus on the second digit of the IP rating – the one in black/grey in the image above.

One of our clients asked us to design an enclosure that could withstand one of the most rigid levels of waterproofing, IP69K.

This level of protection is normally required by the automotive industry.
A vehicle is exposed to a range of harsh environments, from a dusty country road to the pressure washer. As such, the sensitive parts of a vehicle need to be properly protected – thus, the IP69K certification standard.
In order to be certified with this ambitious rating, your device must withstand the testing steps below:

A spray nozzle is fed with 80 °C (176 F) water at 80–100 bar and a flow rate of 14–16 L/min.

• The nozzle is held 10–15 cm from the device at angles of 0°, 30°, 60° and 90° for 30 seconds each.
• The test device sits on a turntable that rotates once every 12 seconds.

Designing the sealing housing

When pressure and/or high temperature are in play, the safest approach is to use a double seal design.

 

The outer seal should act as a first protection, reducing the pressure that will be seen by the inner seal.

Both seals, outer and inner, can be any of the following

• O-ring
• Gasket
• Glue
• Adhesive Tape
• A combination of the above

Materials drive the sealing selection.

If you opt for tapes or adhesives, they must adhere firmly to the enclosure surface. Make sure to select an appropriate seal based on the enclosure material (plastic, metal, composite).
Also, make sure to clean both surfaces prior to application, otherwise you won’t get full bonding strength. To increase glue adhesion even further, sand off the two surfaces with a fine grain sanding paper.

As an example, 3M offers some Very High Bonding tapes for plastic enclosures. Each option is tailored for a specific application.

If o-rings are your choice, the common ones in silicone should suffice for most use cases. Here is a more detailed article with a table comparing different o-ring materials.

Keep the electronics safe, and the EE team happy

IP69K, IP68 and other high protection ratings require airtight sealing.

Due to its nature, our enclosure won’t allow any exchange of air to the outside environment. As a result, we will see strong pressure variations inside the enclosure.

Also, the electronics located inside will produce heat during operation. This will condense the humidity present inside the enclosure, possibly causing shorts on the electronics themselves

These two factors will drastically shorten the lifespan of electronic parts inside the enclosure.

To avoid these issues, vents must be added on the enclosure, so that air can flow in and out. Pressure will then equalize between inside and outside the enclosure.

If you want to know more about vents, here are two interesting articles. Stay tuned for our own upcoming deep-dive on vents.

It’s fundamental to add a ventilation system to your design.

Amphenol LTW offers a good selection of vents specifically designed for this purpose.

Even though these vents are designed for this job, keep them away from any high pressure jet.

Place them on a side of the enclosure that is less exposed to the elements. If this is not possible, you should think about a more complex design to hide the vent.

Select the right connector

Your device will likely have to connect with another system. That connection point can be the weak link in the whole waterproof chain.

In the following example, the mating surface between enclosure and connector is the weakest point.

Cable overmolding is the most secure way to protect your device. A well designed enclosure along with a good overmolding process will not keep you awake at night. 

There could be a case where you need to have your device disconnected for maintenance or other reasons. In this scenario your only option is a connector.

Amphenol Industrial offers some very good options for harsh environments, here’s an example.

The design should follow the connector’s manufacturer recommendations. As a general rule, the gap between connector and enclosure shall be as small and protected as possible.

Keep the assembly process in mind, and how it could impact this area.

There is something else to be concerned about. Cables that offer IP69K protection will only withstand that standard when they are mated with another cable. When the connector’s pins are exposed, most cables can only get up to IP67.