Product Realization

Involving product design, prototyping, testing, and production support--product realization is a comprehensive process of bringing a product from an idea to a finished usable state.

The goal of research and development utilizing the product realization process is to gain fundamental understanding of the design process and to link the product design with the process design in order to optimize and accelerate the development of new products. Digitally Based Design Approach (DBDA) is used for product realization of Precision Devices and smart Products needed for today advanced industrial applications. The Product Realization Process is first introduced as a road map to establish design that is robust, cost and time effective in order to satisfy the needs of potential customers. Emphasis is placed on the computer-aided techniques that must be integrated to enable the application of DBDA.

The product realization process involves the preconception, the conceptual, the configuration, and the final design and validation phases that constitute design morphology. The preconception phase involves information gathering about the needs, functions, design constraints, and engineering characteristics. In this phase, quality function deployment (QFD) and function decomposition methods are used to extract information in a systematic manner. In the conceptual phase, features of the needed design are identified through mapping between the identified functions and the general engineering features. The new design features are used then to identify a similar case having similar features. Modifications to the selected case based on the identified constraints and engineering characteristics will result in several concepts. The evolved concepts are then compared to generate the final one. In the third phase, the design will be configured by selecting appropriate materials and geometry of different component using the introduced DBDA. In this phase the manufacturing and assembly methods are determined through mapping the relationships between process capabilities, material properties, and geometric features. The configured design is finalized in the last phase of this road map through testing and evaluation of prototypes.