INTEGRATED PRODUCT AND PROCESS DEVELOPMENT FOR OPTIMIZATION OF PERFORMACE AND COST

In development of next generation products, 80% or more of the downstream costs associated are committed during design phase. If we could predict, with reasonable confidence, the long-term impact of design decisions, it would open opportunities to develop better designs that result in tremendous future cost savings, often with no compromise in key performance objectives. Systems engineering is, by its nature, multi-disciplinary. The aim of Integrated Product and Process Development is to bring these disciplines together in order to assess various downstream implications of early design decisions, creating better designs, avoiding dead-end designs that are costly in terms of design cycle-time, and realizing designs that are manufacturable while achieving the performance objectives. The goal is to build a downstream value analysis tool that links all the conceptual design activities. This capability allows a designer to realize the long-range impacts of key up-front design decisions.