Packaging Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Products as a Single System

Our company is a telecommunications consulting firm that repsonds to clients solicitations for system integration, installation, maintenance and operations. The are a number of times that a client has posed a problem they want to overcome. In these cases we actually design a system using Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) products. In most cases we select a number of COT products and package them in special cases for transportation.

We have been advised that we have to have a complete design and process control section in our QSM. Is this a fact. Is our work considered DESIGN. I thought this would apply to the design and development of a NEW product. NOT the assembly of existing products.

If one does rack and stack work, do you require a verfication and validation of the final system? Or can one use the specifications of the individual components become what is verified?

Any help or comments are welcomed. Don't want to have extraneous paperwork.

Re: Packaging COTS Products as a Single System

assyrian47 said:

In these cases we actually design a system using Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) products.

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(emphasis added)
You seem to have answered your own question.

assyrian47 said:

We have been advised that we have to have a complete design and process control section in our QSM. Is this a fact. Is our work considered DESIGN. I thought this would apply to the design and development of a NEW product. NOT the assembly of existing products.

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What you're designing is a new "product." It's hard to see how you can escape the requirements for design control when you describe what you're doing as "design."

assyrian47 said:

If one does rack and stack work, do you require a verfication and validation of the final system? Or can one use the specifications of the individual components become what is verified?

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It's hard to say without know specifically what you're doing, but it seems to me that you should have some basis (experience, perhaps) for knowing that the combined products will work as intended.

Re: Packaging COTS Products as a Single System

I agree, creation of a problem-solution by means of combination of modules into a system definitely is design.

If one does rack and stack work, do you require a verfication and validation of the final system? Or can one use the specifications of the individual components become what is verified?

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Does the designer select what modules to use based only on their stated individual specifications, or does he also take into consideration additional knowledge that he has or additional information he obtains from other sources regarding how they work together, reliability, interactions, etc., as a system instead of individually? If the former, verification is sufficient. If the latter, validation is required.