👨🏻🔬From Lab to Fab: Why You Need a CPO - Chief Production Officer👷🏻♂️
- Emin Askerov
- Jan 8
- 2 min read
“I hired a Chief Production Officer, and can finally focus on business.” Those were my client's words, Duke Oh, as we drove through Germany on a two-week business development trip. Just six months ago, such a trip would have been unimaginable. Back then, Duke was knee-deep in launching his lithium-ion electrode factory—juggling production issues, firefighting problems, and figuring out operations.
That’s what scaling up means: changing how you make your product. You can’t keep playing around like you did during R&D. Scaling demands you lock in product specs and shift focus to repeating the same process flawlessly, over and over again.
🚧 But here’s the catch—this isn’t a job for your R&D team. Scaling introduces new challenges:
Health & safety protocols
Organizing shift work
Assembly line design & management
Quality control
Supply chain coordination, etc.
These aren’t skills your startup’s scrappy R&D team typically brings to the table. That’s why scaling is hard. It’s also why many startups hit a wall—they don’t realize they need different people, with different expertise, to lead their production efforts.
Elon Musk wasn’t exaggerating when he called scaling “production hell.” Building your first industrial-scale operations takes dedication, discipline, and a whole lot of time. It’s a trap many founders fall into—getting so bogged down by production headaches that they have no time left for what matters most:
Securing new clients
Working with investors
Growing their team
The solution? Hire the right person to lead production. Someone who thrives on process, consistency, and execution. Someone who can take “production hell” off your plate, so you can focus on scaling the business.
What was your “production hell” experience, and how did you deal with it? Comment and follow me for more cleantech scale-up tips and tactics!
