HWTrek (Hardware Trek), the global open innovation and collaboration platform for hardware creation, has announced an update to its platform that adds cloud-based collaboration features.
This is designed to improve IoT manufacturing supply chain visibility and transparency — vertically, up and down the supply chain — and increase efficiency, enabling more effective communication between hardware developers and supply chain partners that constitute a multi-member project team on the platform.
The IoT market is expected to reach $1.7 trillion in 2020, up from $655.8 billion in 2014 according to IDC. Meanwhile, the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry including electronics original design services (ODM) should expect revenues of $505 billion in 2019.
New Venture Research estimates that total electronics assembly value was $1.3 trillion in 2015 and will grow to approximately $1.6 trillion in 2020. The source of innovation is shifting to small and medium-sized businesses in these industries due to the barriers of communication and collaboration between hardware developers and the global manufacturing and supply chain.
With the integration of professional network (expert ecosystem community) and productivity software (collaboration tools) in the latest iteration of its enterprise, B2B platform, HWTrek is disrupting the traditional hardware design and development, and electronics supply chain model and rewiring the supply chain from centers of manufacturing such as China and Japan to the rest of the world.
“HWTrek bridges us to the right innovators based on our sales request and technical capabilities, facilitates our communication with various projects, and provides support from relevant supply chain partners, stated Hunter Huang, senior program manager at Flex. “Such collaboration with HWTrek leads to successful product deliveries.”
HWTrek’s integrated enterprise B2B service platform and tools for hardware development assist hardware innovators to more effectively leverage HWTrek’s market-leading multi-billion dollar, global hardware community of 1,900+ design, manufacturing, and supply chain experts offering resources and services including more than 900 solutions and programs tailored to accelerate product development, project management, and go-to-market.
The HWTrek Project Development Hub (the “Hub”) platform and collaboration tools help to connect the dots virtually between hardware developers and the supply chain, other resources, and services for the entire lifecycle of a product from ideation to manufacturing, and retail to delighted customers.
“We expect more IoT innovator projects—with excellent ideas—through the HWTrek ecosystem,” said Jack Akita, responsible for the +Style Partner Alliance at Softbank. “Softbank is helping IoT startups to enter the Japanese market. Our goal is distributing their products to big scale businesses through the Softbank group. We are helping their distribution and marketing in the Japanese market through our +Style platform.”
The new collaboration features include:
- Group-based problem solving and task management – create groups to resolve issues, facilitate communications and task assignments within your internal and partner project team
- To-do list– collects all messages in need of urgent attention
- Exclusive, unique contact list– track partners and team members, frequent contacts, and potential collaborators
- Work stored in a central location – all essential project documents, pictures, videos, presentations, and any other materials in single location
- Document timestamping– ensures that your team is using the latest version
“The HWTrek platform is very useful to find partners and experts from various fields. A very useful feature is to invite experts, like the HWTrek team, to join the group conversation and help to evaluate potential partners and companies,” said Luka Mali, co-founder & CTO at Ulla Labs. “We’re looking for an EMS/OEM partner as well as an ODM/JDM partner to help us redesign the product and help us on the new generation of products. Due to the high demand and production quantities over 100K units per year, our business model is not sustainable if we keep production in Europe.
We found several experts that are interested in our product. These provide various sensors and connectivity modules. HWTrek helped to narrow the selection of partners from few hundred to just a couple of the most suitable ones. The final decision is left to the creators and HWTrek team doesn’t influence this decision and this I think is the most important part to provide the long-term sustainability of the whole hardware ecosystem.”
HWTrek’s cloud-based, collaborative Software as a Service (SaaS) platform is the first global, complete end-to-end hardware development ecosystem—a one-stop shop—for IoT hardware innovators collaboratively working to manage their product development, connect with manufacturing and supply chain industry experts, and bring their connected device projects to market.
HWTrek now connects more than 9,000 hardware creators that have created 2,500 projects on the platform to 1,900 trusted manufacturing and supply chain industry experts from Shenzhen, Taiwan, and Japan to rest of the world—from tier 1 ODMs to small, skilled design houses—who have developed unique programs and solutions to assist the creators at all stages of product development. More than 3,000 inquiries have been successfully bridged with manufacturers and other experts.
“Through the new innovative collaboration channel that HWTrek provides, we’ve obtained lots of business opportunities and latest info on projects in the global market,” said Kwok Tsun, Technical sales at HQPCB. “HWTrek brings us closer to creators, and enable us to deliver better services.”
Imagine the value for hardware developers, design, manufacturing supply chain experts working together on a specific project management task to simultaneously manage relationships with partners combined with a suggested feed of potential partners from the community that match the requirements of the project together with insights about who is connected to whom on a single integrated collaborative platform.
Learn more about using HWTrek’s collaboration tools for IoT hardware project development here.
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