Rapid product development: an overview

The success of innovative engineering processes depend on short and iterative development cycles which offer the possibility of high quality products, cost-efficient on the market and thus to stand up to today's tough competitive pressure. All these new methods are subsumed under the term "RapidProduct Development" (RPD). Research focuses attention not only on the products, but also their development process. By pursuing several variants with modern methods the optimal solution can be found. In order to guarantee the continuity of the whole product development process, organisation structure, process and resources have to be connected ideally. Enhancing the Simultaneous Engineering approach, RPD is an interdisciplinary evolutionary methodology to combine all influences of an engineering process to an iterative product development. To shorten the development process several tools are available: physical and digital prototypes for the early and cost-efficient evaluation of different alternatives, the representation of knowledge for different experts by means of an Active Semantic Network (ASN) for the integration of interdisciplinary teams, technical support of communication and cooperation within the team by adequate synchronous and asynchronous media. The Engineering Solution Center (ESC) demonstrates the realization of these technologies and methods in detail.