How I came in — and what I found
Blast Motion came to me when their product was getting real buzz — a category-defining motion-capture wearable for baseball and golf athletes — but their manufacturing was barely keeping up. I was initially engaged as a consultant to assess and fix their operational infrastructure. The work spoke for itself: they brought me on full-time as Director of Operations to see it through to scale.
What I found was a company at a dangerous inflection point. Great product. Broken systems. The kind of situation that kills hardware startups not because the technology failed, but because the operational foundation wasn't there to support it.
Three things were broken — and they were all compounding
Test Systems Were Undermining Production
Firmware engineers who'd never stood on a factory floor had designed prototype testing. Production firmware bled directly into the test environment — injecting bugs, corrupting builds, and dragging First Pass Yield down to 76%.
Procurement Was Invisible
Components were bought on credit cards from internet vendors. No BOM system. No cost visibility. No supply chain partner — just a spreadsheet edited by four people who hoped for the best. 25% of boards became scrap.
Hardware Was Constrained by Equipment Limits
The local contract manufacturer lacked SMT equipment for 01005 components. Engineers were designing around capability gaps — leaving performance and board real estate on the table before the product even shipped.
The cost wasn't just technical. It was financial. Tens of thousands of dollars in scrapped prototype builds. Cash flow strangled by Net 30 payment cycles. And a company burning time and money on problems that had well-known solutions — if you knew where to look.
I deployed a three-pillar approach to operational transformation
I brought in a seasoned manufacturing test engineer and built a standardised test suite on National Instruments hardware and software. More importantly, I worked directly with the firmware team to create a dedicated manufacturing test firmware — completely decoupled from the production release branch. No more bug bleed. No more contaminated builds.
Why it matteredFPY jumped from 76% to 98% in 7 months. The industry benchmark for a similar implementation is 12–18 months. Rework costs collapsed almost immediately.
I used Blast Motion's product momentum — genuine excitement around a baseball and golf wearable with real MLB traction — to negotiate with the largest electronics distributor in the US. I secured better procurement terms and, critically, extended payment terms to Net 90.
For an early-stage startup watching every dollar, that's 9–12 months of additional cash runway — without raising another round. The partnership also unlocked their manufacturing arm, giving our engineers access to modern SMT equipment capable of 01005 components and the design freedom they'd been denied.
Why it matteredExtended payment terms strengthened the balance sheet. Smaller components unlocked denser, more capable board designs. Two wins from one negotiation.
I implemented Arena PLM from scratch — the company's first cloud-based product lifecycle management platform. I built a part number schema, formalised Engineering Change Orders (ECOs), Manufacturing Change Orders (MCOs), and SOP document control workflows.
Why it matteredOver 1,000 component and document part numbers under real version control. One source of truth. Every change documented. The spreadsheet chaos was gone for good.
The numbers tell the story
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| First Pass Yield | 76% | 98% |
| Scrap Rate | ~25% | Single digits |
| Production Volume | 100s / month | 30,000 / month |
| Payment Terms | Net 30 | Net 90 (+9–12 mo runway) |
| Time to 98% FPY | 12–18 mo (industry avg) | 7 months |
| Parts Under Version Control | 0 (spreadsheet) | 1,000+ |
Most importantly: Blast Motion went from scrappy prototype cycles to a manufacturing operation ready for seamless volume production overseas — on time, and without the operational fires that had been holding everything back.
When the product shipped — so did the results
Helping the Houston Astros Win the 2017 World Series
The real validation wasn't a metrics dashboard. It was standing next to All-Star shortstop Carlos Correa after the Houston Astros won the 2017 MLB World Series — knowing that the manufacturing infrastructure I built helped put Blast Motion's technology in the hands of the athletes who used it to train, compete, and win.
That's what operational excellence looks like when it compounds. Not just cleaner spreadsheets and better yields — but a product that actually ships, scales, and performs when it matters most.
2017 MLB World Series ChampionsGreat hardware doesn't scale on innovation alone
I've seen brilliant engineering teams build world-class products that fail because no one built the operational infrastructure around them. Prototypes work in a lab. Volume production requires systems, partnerships, and discipline.
At Blast Motion, I didn't just fix test systems. I installed a manufacturing framework that turned a scrappy prototype cycle into a scalable operation ready for Series B. I was brought in as a consultant, and the results earned me a full-time seat at the table.
That's the work — and that's what I bring to every engagement.
This case study resonates if...
You're a hardware founder scaling to Series B and your manufacturing can't keep up with your product
Your first pass yield is dragging down production velocity and eating into your margins
Your BOM lives in a spreadsheet that three people are editing and nobody fully trusts
You need to extend cash runway without raising — and your vendor relationships are untapped leverage