Future potential of rapid product development. A concept integrating organizational aspects

The described Rapid Product Development (RPD) Approach tries to integrate evolutionary processes into a Simultaneous Engineering framework (SE) in order to create an environment, which is flexible enough to speed up the process but also to allow an appropriate customer focus. The paper advocates to utilize a SE framework integrating evolutionary design processes, which are applied to the development of new components or parts. Mechanisms and methods are presented, which secure the right balance between traditional and evolutionary processes as well as their coordination and management. RPD is presented as a holistic design approach, which not only allows shortened development times but also profitable products.