A Brief Introduction to Prototype Development

Alexander Debrah 3 w

Prototype development is a key process to develop and create a successful product. It is a challenging task to create profitable and economically viable manufacturing solutions in a competitive global market environment. In order to remain competitive, a manufacturer needs high-quality and inexpensive machines that can facilitate customers changing needs and requirements. A successful company has to manufacture a line of good value products with great speed, precision and consistency. Therefore, the fine execution of the critical tasks in the production-definition stage is of paramount significance.

The production definition stage is not all about defining a product, the actual developmental activities deal with a number of critical product attributes. In other words, the concurrent engineering of various steps in the initial stage from acquiring customer requirements, problem statement, conceptual design, design for assembly, design for manufacturing, and product prototyping to validate the concept, etc. To develop a spot-on product, it is important that design is validated through developing several prototypes. As a manufacturer, it is important to consider that prototype development can be an expensive and time-consuming venture.