Accelerating Product Developments

As seen inFig. 1, U.S. automotive manufacturers lag behind the Japanese in reducing the product-development cycle. A major proportion of this deficit can be attributed to their reduction in engineering changes (e.g., ‘‘by doing it right the first time’’). The Japanese have demonstrated a great willingness to more readily utilize the kinds of technological tools that help reduce cycle time. They have made the most of their common cultural heritage to better communicate and work together. Past experiences have taught them to depend on each other to survive in a global economy. On the other hand, U.S. auto manufacturers and their suppliers developed in an environment in which all

Figure 1 Product-development time lines A: concept development; B: prototype de-velopment; C: manufacturing development. **Development time minimized to show potential of rapid prototype (RP) utilization. (Data from Automotive Industries, Sep-tember 1991.)

competition was localized within the country. These companies grew by being less cooperative and more competitive. The traditional methods of communi-cation between product and manufacturing engineers became the infamous

‘‘toss it over the wall’’ approach. There was little collaboration in the early stages of the product-development cycle. As the automotive market became more global, customer demands for sophisticated niche cars grew to meet their ever-changing social and environmental expectations while government regulations increased for cleaner air and greater fuel economy. These changes increased vehicle manufacturing and organizational complexities both inter-nally and within the supplier base. Unfortunately, the result was longer product-development lead times and higher product cost.

This situation is changing rapidly among U.S. OEMs in the automotive industry. Conventional thinking, limited to the type of machines and methods used in the past, is giving way to radically new approaches to reducing product-development times. Figure 1 forecasts how the integration of RP&M into the product development process can reduce overall cycle time by over 50%, making a U.S. OEM more competitive than ever. This forecast is based on the accumulated influences of rapid prototyping (RP) on the prototype-development stage and RT on the manufacturing-prototype-development stage of the product-development cycle. In general, the walls of communication between product and manufacturing are being broken down in the United States by the use of computer-aided technologies.

Figure 2is a simplified model representing the industry’s major commu-nication stages of product development from concept to customer: (1) concept design, (2) prototype verification, (3) tooling fabrication, (4) manufacturing process feasibility, (5) assembly optimization, and (6) customer approval. Tra-ditionally, product-development communication only flows downstream from concept to the customer. When one stage of the process is completed, informa-tion is tossed ‘‘over the wall’’ to the next stage. This ‘‘one-way’’ approach to information flow is characterized by many costly, time-consuming, engi-neering changes that occur further ‘‘downstream,’’ making cost-effective globalization difficult to achieve. In contrast, ‘‘upstream’’ communication flow, like customer-driven concept developments (‘‘listen to the voice of the customer’’), helps improve sales, and predicts future markets. Likewise, computer-aided technologies like Design for Assembly (DFA) and Design for Manufacturing (DFM) help improve product quality and reduce manufacturing cost. Additional ‘‘upstream’’ information flow between the manufacturing process and tooling fabrication stages encourages process-driven tool develop-ment for reduced fabrication lead time and cost (a rapidly growing future trend).

Figure 2 Concept to customer product-development model (communication to the five development stages improves our competitive edge).

In general, ‘‘upstream’’ communication allows engineering knowledge and experiences (things gone wrong) about downstream processes to be made available earlier in the conceptual and prototype design stages. This kind of knowledge-based information flow can help eliminate unwanted engineering changes and rework that would otherwise occur ‘‘downstream’’ in the manufacturing-development stages. Traditionally, as much as 80% of total vehicle development cost is built-in during the conceptual design phase. The implementation of computer-aided technologies to improve communication between the six product-development stages would make the overall process more ‘‘seamless’’ and flexible for developing a more robust fabrication sys-tem. Government-sponsored initiatives like Rapid Response Manufacturing have fueled the emergence of spin-off technologies and development programs designed to address the ‘‘upstream’’ communication problem. A 45 million dollar consortium has been formed between GM, Ford, and 10 other high-tech computer hardware and software companies whose primary objective is to develop future computer-aided technologies such as feature-based design, object-oriented methods, and relational database management for accelerating the product and manufacturing-development process.

Reverse Engineering is another computer-aided technology that helps reduce cycle time when redesigns become necessary for improved product quality. Preexisting parts with features for improved performance can be readily incorporated into the desired part design. Reverse Engineering can be used to automatically generate analytical or CAD data representations (point clouds) directly from physical parts, for which no CAD data were previously available. Current applications employ the use of laser scanning (a) to inspect parts where analytical data are generated and can be compared to the original part data and (b) to machine tool inserts where the scanned data are used to generate cutter path data. Unfortunately, part design modifications are often made during sequential processes downstream from CAD operations. Once this happens, the parts made do not match the analytical CAD representation.

This problem can be readily overcome with the implementation of ‘‘up-stream’’ communication enablers.