Product design involves the creative and systematic prescription of the form and characteristics of an artifact to realize specified objectives while simultaneously satisfying several constraints.
Design may be a critical activity, because it’s been estimated that the maximum amount as 80% of the price of development and manufacture is set by the selections made within the initial stages of design.
The product design process has been studied extensively; it’s briefly introduced here due to the strong interactions between manufacturing and style activities.
Innovative approaches are essential in successful product design, as are clearly specified functions and a transparent statement of the performance expected of the merchandise, which can be new or a modified version of an existing product.
The marketplace for the merchandise and its anticipated use(s) also must be clearly defined; this aspect involves the help of market analysts and sales personnel who will bring valuable.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
This technique may, at first, appear to be straightforward and logical; in practice, however, it’s wasteful of resources.
Consider the case of a producing engineer who, as an example, determines that, for a spread of reasons, it’d be more desirable (a) to use a distinct material, like a polymer or a ceramic, rather than a metal or (b) to use the identical material, but during a different condition, like a softer rather than a harder material or a fabric with a smoother surface finish, or (c) to change the look of a component so as to create it easier, faster, and fewer expensive to manufacture.
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING
Driven primarily by the patron industry, a seamless trend is going down to bring products to the marketplace as rapidly as possible, so on gain a better percentage share of the market and thus higher profits.
An important methodology aimed toward achieving this end is concurrent engineering, which involves the product-development.
Note that, although this idea, also called simultaneous engineering, still has the identical general product-flow sequence as within the traditional approach, it now contains several deliberate modifications.
As a result, any iterations which will should be made would require a smaller effort and thus end in much less wasted time than occurs within the traditional approach to style.
It should be apparent that a critical feature of this approach is that the recognition of the importance of communication among and within all disciplines.
Concurrent engineering will be implemented in companies large or small, which is especially significant because 98% of all U.S. manufacturing companies have fewer than 500 employees.
Such companies are generally remarked as small businesses.
As an example of the advantages of concurrent engineering, one automotive company reduced the amount of components in one amongst its engines by 30%, decreased the engine weight by 25%, and reduced its manufacturing time by 50%.
Life Cycle. In concurrent engineering, the look and manufacture of products are integrated with a view toward optimizing all elements involved within the life cycle of the merchandise.
The life cycle of a replacement product generally consists of the subsequent four stages: 1. Product start-up 2. rapid climb of the merchandise within the marketplace 3. Product maturity 4. Decline.
Consequently, life-cycle engineering requires that the complete lifetime of a product be considered, beginning with the look stage and on through production, distribution, product use, and, finally, recycling or the disposal of the merchandise.
ROLE OF COMPUTERS IN PRODUCT DESIGN
Typically, product design first requires the preparation of analytical and physical models of the merchandise for the needs of visualization and engineering analysis.
Although the necessity for such models depends on product complexity, constructing and studying these models became highly simplified through the utilization of CAD (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) techniques.
CAD systems are capable of rapid and complete analyses of styles, whether or not it’s a straightforward bracket or a shaft in large and complicated structures.
The Boeing 777 passenger airplane, for instance, was designed completely by computers in an exceedingly process referred to as paperless design, with 2000 workstations linked to eight design servers.
Unlike previous mock-ups of aircraft, no prototypes or mock-ups were built and also the 777 was constructed and assembled directly from the CAD/CAM software that had been developed.
Through computer-aided engineering, the performance of structures subjected, as an example, to static or fluctuating loads or to temperature gradients can also be Design for Manufacture, Assembly, Disassembly, and repair 11 simulated, analyzed, and tested, rapidly and accurately.
The information developed is stored and may be retrieved, displayed, printed, and transferred anytime and anywhere within a company’s organization.
Design modifications is made and optimized (as is commonly the practice in engineering, especially within the production of enormous structures) directly, easily, and at any time.
