Selection and Integration of Technologies for Rapid Product Development

The philosophy of Rapid Product Development (RPD) is based on the aim for short time-to-market, high degree of innovation and fast decision making processes in combination with new manufacturing technologies. The relevant features of prototypes are fixed in the quality planning process, based on the requirements of the product. They strongly depend upon in which product development period (early, late) the prototype is used and for what intention it is used for (design verification, geometric prototype, functional testing, etc.). A key question is which kind of technologies or combinations of them fulfill these quality features best. The number of different technologies, like NC-milling, stereolithography, investment casting, etc., used in RPD is rapidly increasing. Each technology has got its own properties in view of quality, time, cost and organization. This leads to problems selecting the suitable technologies. The aim is to provide computerbased flexible tools which support this s electing of optimal technologies in a RPD environment.