Hi Rich
The FRDM boards (with OpenSDA) are very suitable for standalone applications since you can load binary files to them using the OpenSDA's USB-MSD loader, which appears as a hard drive.
There are many projects where the FRDM boards are used together with a shield to become a complete product.
See µTasker Kinetis FRDM-K22F support
The IDEs can generate binary, hex, srec etc.(some support many formats and others only one or two). If you use KDS it can select one of serveral outputs but you can also add a post-buid step that calls a bat file to use GCC objcopy to generate whatever alternative format you may require.
eg.
arm-none-eabi-objcopy --output-target=binary myProject.elf myProject.bin
[alternatives --output-target=srec, --output-target=ihex etc.]
KDS:

Regards
Mark
µTasker Kinetis support