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Product development and manufacturing organizations are moving from the traditional, multiple and serial design-build-test cycle approach to an integrated, concurrent task and systems engineering paradigm, led by upfront planning, analysis and simulation, supported by credible product test data. This "paradigm shift" includes a move from a predominance of physical testing for product prototype validation to simulation-led problem solving and performance validation, using Computer Aided Engineering, and Design (CAE and CAD) tools. Supported by use of Computer Aided Testing (CAT), physical testing capabilities have comparably grown in accuracy and application range. The role of testing is moving from mostly pre-production validation to include support of product design decisions throughout the development process, including upfront planning.
Section 1.01
Section 1.02 TRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENT PARADIGMS In 1801 Gaspard Monge published "La Geometry Descriptive", a dissertation proposing the use of mechanical drawings (plan and elevation drawings to represent three dimensions) over direct construction of physical models. The paradigm shift was eventually embraced and over time mechanical drawings emerged as the standard in manufacturing. Physical models built from the drawings, nonetheless remained the primary means to test design hypotheses.
Since the advent of CAE, CAD, CAT and other Computer Aided technologies (collectively called "CAX"), significant and broad changes from the 19th century paradigm have been made to greatly improve and standardize means to define and manage product data, facilitate problem solving, evaluate multiple alternatives and automate development and production. Some have referred to this late 20th century paradigm as "Digital Engineering".
However, in most cases, companies have only partially leveraged these tools, as they have not yet changed many of their traditional development processes, and physical prototypes continue to be used as the primary means of uncovering problems, rather than beforehand: during planning, concept design and detail design. Traditional companies today spend about 20 to 30% of their development resource investments before starting detail design. This approach typically leads to multiple additional design, build and test cycles and this approach remains mostly a sequential process. Some of these additional development cycles result from introducing unvalidated new technology.
Even more risky is the desire of development teams to meet schedules, often releasing products to market before proper validation is completed ? leaving endusers to discover undetected problems.
Today, a range of development capabilities exist within the range of more complex product companies (e.g. vehicles) with regard to leveraging tools and optimizing process, from traditional to the new development paradigm that employs concurrent processes with significant upfront use of CAX tools.
Figure 1 provides a conceptual time line of the Traditional development approach. Figure 2 contrasts this with a new paradigm in product development, as explained below.
PARADIGM SHIFT IN DEVELOPMENT
As a means of trying to shorten the development cycle and improving productivity in development, concurrent development and manufacturing processes were introduced in the 1980's, first in Japan (1985)i (1986), where this is credited as a major part of the driving force that transformed the Japanese automotive industry into a competitive world force. Concurrent process approaches integrate new product development processes and allow participants making upstream decisions to consider downstream and external requirements. In North America, companies first began to implement concurrent development activities during the late 1980's.
The new paradigm of Concurrent Product and Manufacturing Process Development (ITI refers to this as "CPPD" and other organizations have a variety of names for similar sets of best practices) fully leverages "Digital Engineering" but additionally employs multiple up-front simulations and trade-off studies that optimize product and manufacturing processes and design alternatives related to new content, new processes or problem-solving, as depicted in Figure 2. This allows the best design ideas to be moved forward as a product of the concept selection process: concepts that meet the needs of the customers, including achieving performance, regulations, quality/reliability, cost, weight, and other targets. The goal is to assure a "hit product" before detail design is started and before costly prototypes and tooling are built.
This new development paradigm in product development has evolved over the last generation. Organizations successful in deploying CPPD spend 60 to 70% of their development resource investments before detail design. These programs are built around targets (requirements), which in turn are defined by the marketplace ("Voice of the Customer" or VOC).
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