Seedling Sessions: Agriculture Innovation

Transforming Ideas into Products: A Deep-Dive into Product Development Consultancy and Agri-Tech Innovation

• Season 1 • Episode 35

Share episode

Ever thought about how a simple idea transforms into a tangible product? Let our guest, Zane van Romunde, Associate Director at eg Technology, enlighten you about this fascinating process. We delve deep into the world of product development consultancy, focusing on its critical role in agri-tech. Zane touches upon how innovative technology is revolutionizing community health, animal welfare, and environmental conservation, and how early-stage companies can gain by aligning with consultancies like EG Technology.

Without a doubt, user feedback is a vital cog in product development. In the second half, we dig into user studies, their power in shaping products, and how they inform decisions on crucial aspects like size, weight, and power requirements. We also explore how eg Technology leverages data-driven decision-making and discuss their transition to employee ownership. This episode is a goldmine of information for those into product development, agri-tech, or sustainable energy. Don't miss it!

eg Technology will be hosting a mini agritech expo event 3rd October 2023 - https://www.egtechnology.co.uk/developing-agritech-2023/

Thomas Slattery:

Welcome to Seating Sessions brought to you by Aerobe Center. I'm your host, thomas Slattery, and today we're speaking with Zane and Ramon Dey, associate Director at EG Technology. His company is a product design and engineering consultancy firm that works across numerous sectors, with a growing interest in agriculture. Zane's background is in sustainable energy and mechanical engineering. He will share with us his experience in these fields and how they shaped his approach to product development consultancy. Zane will also walk us through the process his team at EG Technology uses to transform ideas into tangible products that we use in our everyday lives.

Thomas Slattery:

In this episode, we'll discuss the importance of identifying, mitigating potential risks throughout the product development process to ensure the creation of robust and official products. Furthermore, we'll explore the agri-tech sector why it's garnering interest and how it's making a difference in areas like community health, animal welfare and environmental conservation. We'll also talk about how companies, especially those in their early stages or those looking for new opportunities, can engage with a consultancy like EG Technology. Please join us for a conversation that offers insights into the world of engineering, sustainable energy and agri-tech. Let's get started. Hi Zane, thanks very much for joining us today. Could you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and, of course, your role at EG Technology.

Zane van Romunde:

Hi Tom, thanks for the invite to join us evening sessions today. I'm an Associate Director at EG Technology. My background was originally in sustainable energy, which I based my PhD in mechanical engineering, and then through that I got into technology and product development for a large company in that space and from that hopped into the more kind of generic world of product development consultancy and that's where I've been for the last 10 years or so. Having joined EG about 18 months ago now as an Associate Director, it's really my role at EG to oversee projects as they're running internally and be the eyes and ears of the clients and make sure that we're delivering to their requirements, as well as kind of carry out business development and really grow our exposure in markets where our services are of value. Agri-tech is one of those areas that I and the business feel that we have a lot to offer and it's a great interest to us as a business generally in terms of supporting farming and food production.

Thomas Slattery:

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a very exciting sector, particularly at the moment, for lots of different reasons, but a lot of that being the massive positive impacts that it can have across communities health, animal welfare, environment, etc. Now, given the context of the podcast, there may be some people out there who don't understand what product development consultancy is. Would you maybe mind giving a little bit of insight into that and how that aligns with Agri-tech? Yeah, absolutely.

Zane van Romunde:

So I think we all take products, hardware of any sort kind of for granted. It's all around us, from the phones we carry to every bit of kit we use on the farm and around the place, and all those bits of equipment have at some point been designed and engineered and that's not just to kind of sketch it on a paper and then make many and expect them all to work kind of exercise to get to a product that you can place on the market, especially in a regulated market which, let's face it, most products that have kind of connectivity and electronics and all that sort of thing have a form of regulation around them, even ones that don't have to self-certify that they're safe and suitable for use. That whole engineering is a process in terms of kind of starting with the science or the innovation or the need that has been identified to be solved, to embodying the physics that does that in a piece of kit. And that kit then has to be engineered to also be mass-manufactured, because whilst there's a few bits of machinery out there that are kind of one-offs or five-offs, on the whole most kind of bits of hardware that we think of are made in relatively large volume. And to kind of make sure that the equipment works repeatably, it does its job, it satisfies the need that it's been designed to do, and that it works robustly and is cost-effective and all those other kind of myriad of requirements is often not a trivial exercise.

Zane van Romunde:

And so we work with a lot of innovators, other startups, but also large companies that recognize that to do something new and different needs different skill sets, and so we kind of have that interdisciplinary team of different types of engineers mechanical engineers, electronic engineers, software engineers, usability experts and industrial designers who are really well-versed in that process of taking an idea and turning it into a piece of kit that can be placed on the market.

Zane van Romunde:

So we don't manufacture but we work with manufacturers and we sort of take it through the whole prototyping or design and prototyping, testing, development phase and then eventually hand it over to manufacturers. There's a certain set of steps in that process to make it efficient and to recognize what the risks are along the way in terms of usability risks, in terms of technical risks and in terms of manufacturing induced risks that by having that experience you can build into that development process to make sure that you're testing and proving to yourself and, where appropriate, to the regulators at each step that you've mitigated that risk through the design and engineering, so that you as an inventor are comfortable and confident that the end product is going to be fit for purpose and ultimately will be accepted by the market so that you can sell it.

Thomas Slattery:

Yeah, I think there's a really nice outline and I think often people don't appreciate the amount of steps on that roadmap from initial idea or even ideation through to mass manufacture. Obviously, one of the big hurdles there which I mean can come on to, I think, is when newer technologies try to move from prototype or even post-prototype stage into mass manufacture, and that can be a real hurdle. So from what you said, it sounds like EG is why this would call a full service consultancy. It sounds like you might even get involved early stage around ideation kind of product specifications. In the context of what a lot of our listeners are, which will either be kind of early stage tech developers and all people working in farming, food and agriculture with ideas, what's a good time would you say for them to get involved with a consultancy like yours and where are the stages that you think you can be of the most help at the potential at the beginning?

Zane van Romunde:

Yeah, that's a great question and it really does vary. It depends on the maturity of the company quite often, to be quite honest. So larger companies that are maybe looking for a new opportunity might engage us earlier on to identify market needs or to look at ways to circumvent competitive IP or to identify unmet needs. The vast majority of companies, especially the kind of innovators, spinouts kind of sector it tends to be after they've validated that their idea has value in the market. Maybe they've mocked it up, maybe they've just spoken to a selection of their target market, and often they've raised money through grant funding or through angel investors or something along those lines, and the first step is then to kind of often they figured out how could it be done.

Zane van Romunde:

So the how has been done, but then really the head scratching starts as okay, how do we then do that in a replicable way?

Zane van Romunde:

Because making it out of bits in the garage and that sort of thing is really valid for the first-of prototype and it's wonderful when we get to see those sorts of things, but it's taking it from there on to something that actually, as I said earlier, ultimately can be manufactured with injection, molding or castings, industrial manufacturing techniques and that whole process, I should say, is also, we typically do that in stages, which we call phases, and so it may be that the first phase is just to take it from that kind of initial prototype to a sort of either a looks like or a works like, or sometimes a looks and works like kind of prototype, which then is an enabler to raise the next round of investment or to test the market or to get that next step in that total journey.

Zane van Romunde:

So it's not always a kind of often it isn't a single end-to-end process. It's often lots of stages, where each stage addresses a part of the kind of the table that I alluded to earlier and then you kind of move on again and move on again, and move on again.

Thomas Slattery:

So I think an area that's quite interesting with this is, I think AgriTech is certainly unique to, let's say, consumer product design and something which I hear quite a lot both from the end users or from tech developers that have come up against.

Thomas Slattery:

This is early stage designs and I like the way you use works, like you know, will potentially work, but then once it's kind of put out into the field and is being used, the way things get used, let's say, and farming, there's a whole different set of requirements that might not be considered because they're quite fairly unique and obviously required not just robustness, but often is there areas for charging, you know, has that been considered? The battery life long enough, you know, weather resistance, et cetera, et cetera. So, given that, I think and your background in medical technology development we have, course one would assume that you are certainly looking for a level of robustness and reliability that might not necessarily be looking for in consumer product development. How do you feel that you know, how can you best mitigate some of those problems of kind of product development in these, you know, somewhat more difficult environments?

Zane van Romunde:

Yeah, I know that's a really excellent question. It's interesting because you've just picked up on the medical device side of things. It's not always about robustness. Each product has its own unique set of requirements. To get to those requirements is often a really interesting process in its own right. We do a lot of work in understanding the use case and then downstream what you design something on a usability study to make sure it meets those specifications.

Zane van Romunde:

An interesting example, again from the medical world but it kind of is highly translatable into any other sector, including AgTech is we were approached by a company that had a diagnostic technology and this was to fit into a kind of surgical theatre environment and they were convinced that what that environment? It wasn't a surgeon, it was more the kind of support staff and nurses. What they really wanted was a small handheld device and their technology was capable of providing that. But just to provide confidence, they kind of engaged us to do a user study around that as part of the set of specifications, and so we went into those environments and observed people using it and kind of did quite a few interviews and the overwhelming feedback was no, please do not make it small and portable, because someone will put it in their pocket and they will sit on it, or they will take it home in their car and it will get stolen, or all these other kind of essentially failure modes. What they wanted, what those actual users wanted was a great big block that had to be a certain weight so someone couldn't just carry it off, and had to be physically big, even though the technology didn't need it, so that it was desktop based and it would just be there. Everyone knew where it was and in the hectic, chaotic, high stress environment of an operating theatre it would just be there. They could use it. It had to have a relatively quick turnaround time so that the results from the diagnostic were available real time in terms of the surgery. And so suddenly you're getting all these requirements and specifications in terms of size, weight, time for the machine to do its thing, the clarity readout, all those sorts of things come out of that sort of use case, and that's a particular example of MedTech.

Zane van Romunde:

In agriculture it's a similar thing. So we've been working with a company and one of their big things was you've got to quickly recognise the bit of kit in the back of a pickup truck which might be poorly illuminated. So you have these other use cases and other requirements that drive out of that and understanding those is often the key to really having a successful product. Because no matter how good the technology or the science, if it doesn't meet the basic user requirements then the user won't actually use it. And in the time, pressured and relatively harsh environments of farming those requirements become even more important.

Zane van Romunde:

And then you also touched upon things like charging and power requirements. And if you're out in the fields you can't just plug it in, so you really need to think about battery life and just general maintenance and consumables and all the rest of it. And then obviously, on what the product and what the technology is. But it's not the same as having something that's just designed for use in someone's living room. It's obviously a very different world. But once you understand that, you can build those requirements and specification and engineers and designers like nothing more than specifications because that gives a nice set of checkpoints to which to develop the products. But it's really the art is in getting those specification points right.

Thomas Slattery:

So I think an obvious one in some respects, but it's a very more of what we do at AgriEpicenter is trying to bridge that gap between tech developers and innovators and the actual farming community, commercial farmers who potentially use these products, and that realization that you probably want to be getting in user involved at an early stage. It's fairly obvious and I think people have realized that for some time and we put that at a center of what we do with stakeholder work with, but as a kind of consultancy that spent a lot more time in this. Do you have sort of examples or strategies or ways that you can help advise clients who are at that stage of trying to get again it's not product market fit, so much is it Because it's in that same ballpark?

Zane van Romunde:

Yeah, so there's lots of companies have done that really well. They know exactly what they want. I think the danger lies in companies that think they know exactly what the market wants and therefore go down that path. And sometimes the market doesn't want a faster horse, it wants something completely different, and that's valid too. But it's really about understanding and, as many companies, it's also a question of knowing what you don't know and be willing to explore that.

Zane van Romunde:

I wouldn't say that there's one single strategy. I think what's often useful is to appreciate where testing that hypothesis that your product is right sits within the development process and going through the process of making something that can be some sketches, or it can be a looks like model or it depends on what the technology is. But then to actually, rather than just test that technically, can you open the lid 600 times without it failing, is also to then take that into the field and say if we made something like this, would you use it? Or, even better yet, just give them the thing and say, right, how would you use this and observe what they do. And if they open the lid perfectly every time, then happy days. If, on the other hand, they hold it upside down or use it to shock the wheel of their tractor or something like that, then there's clearly a discrepancy between what you designed and how people actually use it, and that in itself is a valuable learning exercise to feed into that next iteration of development.

Thomas Slattery:

Yeah, so a big focus of the work that I do with AgriEppy is looking at kind of what's the role of tech and innovation driving a more sustainable agriculture. The teams all ramping themselves up for groundswell in a few weeks. So, on that topic, you mentioned previously that you've been working with a client on soil sampling.

Zane van Romunde:

Is that something which you could talk about publicly or I don't go too much detail beyond what you've just said there, but yes, that's in terms of enabling more sustainable practices, clearly understanding the current state of the soil and how impact in or farming practices impact. That is valuable data, and so we're really pleased to be helping a company in that space develop their product to enable infield soil measurements.

Thomas Slattery:

Yeah, yeah, no, it works. I think we had a conversation earlier today even on this, and I think the idea of measuring to manage is not something new in agriculture, but particularly around sustainability, agriculture, et cetera. Finding cheap, effective and reliable ways to measure biodiversity, different parts of soil, health and other things are absolutely vital for us to kind of unless we have a benchmark and a way to measure progress, which is why I'm always such a big fan, and a lot of the technologies we work with in this space are around this idea of how can we more reliably measure things, both to kind of manage it and progress it. I think that's quite a nice segue really, then, into as an organization who have probably got quite a good view across different technology sectors but have been working in every tech for some time now. What do you see as some of the exciting directions that things are going? What's the kind of gap analysis look like? Where do you see things potentially going over the next few years?

Zane van Romunde:

in Agrotech specifically. Yeah, I think so.

Thomas Slattery:

Yeah, I think we can focus on Agrotech. Do any analysis of technology and innovation globally? Is enough of that going on with the AI buzz?

Zane van Romunde:

Well, exactly, yeah, we need a longer podcast for that, I think. Well, I think, as you touched upon, I think, the data elements to enable better decision making is really a key area. I mean, you even mentioned AI. I won't even wade into that area because I think decision making, especially on something that's as granular as farming, probably will still benefit for a long, long time from human intervention, but, nevertheless, you can't argue that better information doesn't need to better decisions, and so, whether that's in the name of efficiency and reducing inputs and maximizing yields, there's clearly a lot of information that can help that, and information really comes out of better data and better understanding of that data, and so I think there's still a huge amount of progress that is being made there and will be made there over time, and it's also a question of making that easy and accessible and useful, as opposed to just generating reams and reams of data, which then doesn't really yeah, absolutely so.

Thomas Slattery:

Interestingly, it's a theme that comes out of these conversations and many others often, and we work with a lot of hardware developers and a lot of the time that is obviously collecting data, and a question that often comes up is well, that's fine, we're collecting a lot of data, whether it's livestock data, infield data, weather data but then how are we able to most effectively deliver that to end users, be that farmers or agronomists, in ways that are both insightful and actionable? And, of course, a lot of that lies on the software side. So, as a product design consultancy, how much do you get involved in that kind of UX and the data analysis side, or is that something which you tend to leave with the tech developers and innovators and you focus much more on the hardware side?

Zane van Romunde:

Interesting question. We do have a decent sized software team that has some UX backend kind of experience as well, so we do slightly get involved with that, but you're right, it's not our bread and butter. What we tend to find more interestingly, though, is that a lot of first generation data comes from existing sensors and what's available, and that then often drives the thought process of if only we knew X, then it would be really useful. And so you're almost starting the way that you should be doing it, which would be the kind of in an ideal world, what would we like to know? And then how do we build the rest of the system to deliver that information?

Zane van Romunde:

The problem with phrasing it like that is you don't always know what you could do and what you can have. So, having that process of working with what's easily available to then drive the thought process of what could we ideally have, then we find that we build the whole back end or the whole system based on that from the software side the information, the data and then ultimately kind of filtering it back to the hardware, the sensing and that side of things. Yes, it's an interesting kind of process to get there, and I think to go back to your earlier question. I think that's the really interesting thing about where we are at the moment. It's that second loop around the cycle to say, okay, what is actually really valuable information and what can't we get from existing sources Soil, carbon and soil sensing, and biodiversity measurement, all those sorts of things that we just haven't thought to measure because we didn't know it was so valuable. It's been valuable for various reasons.

Thomas Slattery:

Obviously we're unknown unknown Exactly. I'll take a little segue off this topic because it's quite unique. I understand that EG made a transition relatively recently with the organization to being employee owned. This answer is almost B-Corp kind of progressive. I mean we'd have spent too long on it, but I think it's very interesting. I'd love to hear about what the thoughts were behind that and how that's kind of progressed.

Zane van Romunde:

Yeah. So EGE was founded in 2002 by Andrew Ead the E and Danny Godfrey the G, and so EGE was 21 years old this year and they sort of felt that the company had come of age. It was then in Danny's loft in the early days and now we're here in a beautiful converted barn in the Cambridge countryside with a team of 50. And so in everyone's eyes it's come a huge, long way.

Zane van Romunde:

And with that coming of age, andrew and Danny sort of felt it was also time to set the company up for its next stage of its progression and, having looked at various options, culturally, as a very sort of closely knit company where everyone is very collaborative and kind of, there's this ethos of working for the greater goods it felt that the employee ownership or the employee ownership trust model was most befitting with that culture and so all the paperwork was completed at the beginning of March this year and we are now an employee owned company and that has really strengthened, I think, that engagement around the company and whilst it's not you mentioned B Corp, whilst it's not kind of exactly the same as that, it has fostered this unity within the company and it's also kind of backed up.

Zane van Romunde:

Some of the drive towards EG has always been around making a positive difference to the way that people live. Clearly, medtech is a big part of that. Agritech and other sectors fit into that too, but the employee ownership model has really reinforced that, I'd say, and has allowed other interests from the employees, especially around sustainability, to come to the fore more, which has been a really positive change.

Zane van Romunde:

That's delightful to hear it was always there. But it's yeah, yeah.

Thomas Slattery:

No, of course, I think once you kind of you change the sort of psychological structure of how people are working with the organisation, because I can imagine, even if it's on a psychological level, so it encourages people to bring things forwards, that might not necessarily have done a difference in a different structure. No, it's very interesting to hear about that. Well, look, it'd be really good to hear about some of any future plans that you've got coming up with EG technology that you can talk about, or any exciting projects, initiatives that don't necessarily have to be in Agritech, but it's always good to hear about the more relevant stuff.

Zane van Romunde:

Yeah, no sure, I think two things stand out really. I can't really talk about any specific projects because the vast majority of what we do is quite confidential, which is great for the clients and great for the work we do, but a bit of a marketing nightmare, sadly. But there's there for obvious reasons.

Thomas Slattery:

I think the two things worth mentioning are.

Zane van Romunde:

so we do a lot of work in piece of equipment that's sense and, as I've taught him to communicate data, so something that we might collectively call connected devices, and I think we've been sort of hiding our light under a bush or a little bit around that.

Zane van Romunde:

So there's going to be a bit of a marketing campaign from us in the autumn around kind of our work and our expertise in connected devices and how we can help everything from sort of system and architecture, design and managing tradeoffs with power management and some of the in field considerations that we talked about earlier and the criteria to actually executing that and enabling the testing and regulatory side of that.

Zane van Romunde:

So that kind of that space I think has got a huge amount of relevance for AgriTech, as we talked about earlier. And then the other thing I think just slightly wider, is that we are still trying to confirm the dates but, given our strength in this in the sector, we're trying to sort of collect a bit of a show and tell and do a bit of an open day kind of eG in AgriTech, and so, as and when we get the arrangements for that confirmed, love to share that with all the epicenter members and invite everyone down to come and see us near Cambridge. See what we're all about and learn about a little bit more about what we have done and what we hope to do going forward in AgriTech.

Thomas Slattery:

And so I think that's another big, credible and is of course we're happy to promote that. So, on that note, obviously, if anyone who's listening wants to reach out and find out some further information about the organization, they can of course, as always, do that through us at the AgriTech presenter.

Zane van Romunde:

But if you want to give any other kind of contact details or where people can find you, yes, sure, so the obvious ones are websites, just wwweg, so the letters e and g, technologycouk, so wwwegtechnologycouk, and there is a contact email on there which is designed at egetechnologycouk. Or, if you can write down very quickly, my name is Zane Van Romundi, at egetechnologycouk is my personal email. So, yeah, feel free to drop me a line, or you can find me on LinkedIn, obviously as well.

Thomas Slattery:

Amazing. Well, look, zane, it's been really interesting chatting to you and I look forward to kind of sending out notifications for this little expo that you're going to have later in the year. But yes, once again, thanks very much for taking the time to have a chat.

Zane van Romunde:

Thank you very much indeed. That was really interesting, thank you.