Rational Embracing of Modern Prototyping Capable Design Technologies into the Tools Pool of Product Design Teams

Today’s markets impose wide sets of requirements for new products. The Process of New Product Design, has shifted from sequential Engineering to Concurrent Engineering, for low cost-early market entry. Design Teams must deliver highest quality within minimum time and cost and global crisis worsens things, by further reducing budgets. Prototyping within design processes has become crucial, whereas, available prototyping alternatives have increased. Decisions regarding the use of the most appropriate one, at specific design milestones, affects and much predetermines the success of the product. This paper addresses the problem of “design target”-based embracing of available prototyping alternatives into the tools pool of design teams, in a concise, integrated way. Considering product design teams are expert driven for specific product categories, the introduced approach records the verification intent of designers and binds it to structured Generic Levels of Technical and non-Technical Attribute clusters and associated Design Factors. Furthermore, prototyping experience, manufacturing capabilities and cost of the implementing organization, local industrial status and regulations, are also considered. Utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process a complete decision tree leads designers to select the most appropriate prototyping method per design stage. The proposed approach assists implementing organizations and design teams towards cost/time benefits, product risk reduction, decision repeatability and independence. A pilot-model has been developed with “Expert Choice” software and an application example is discussed.