'Ramp-up' is a phrasal verb from English that can be understood as leveraging, accelerating, or scaling up a business. In business and industrial contexts, the term is used when a company increases production ahead of growth in demand for its products.
More specifically, ramp-up refers to the increase in the rate of industrial production, from the first batch through to the final target output volume. The concept is particularly common in the technology sector, where changes are implemented more rapidly and over shorter timeframes.
What is ramp-up used for?
In most cases, ramp-up occurs immediately after a project is approved or a prototype is developed.
The production ramp can be understood as the opposite of the MVP, or Minimum Viable Product. In a ramp-up, production is scaled up intensively before stabilising, as the business adapts to market conditions. This is the reverse of the MVP approach, in which initial production investment is deliberately kept low in order to test the market.
Furthermore, given current market dynamics, the life cycles of most products are becoming increasingly shorter. As a consequence, the introduction of new goods to market must occur at an ever faster pace.
How can ramp-up be applied?
Starting from the definition of a production ramp, consider a factory that produces product X and begins producing product Y until the latter reaches its ramp-up. The question then becomes: how does this transition occur? There are two principal approaches:
Closing out the old model
Under this model, production of product X decreases abruptly while product Y is introduced gradually, quickly reaching a sharp ramp-up. In other words, this constitutes an immediate replacement of products. This method is widely used in American and European industries.
Block introduction
Under this approach, production of product X also decreases immediately, but only by half. At the same time, production of Y begins gradually, reaching the halfway point of the product life cycle. In the second half, Y is expected to be fully in ramp-up.
Source: Diário Económico
Original article: https://www.diarioeconomico.co.mz/2026/04/13/economia/abc-financeiro/explicador-o-que-e-ramp-up/
