Rapid Prototyping for Competitive Advantage: Technologies, Applications and Implementation for Market Success [Spiral-bound]

Rapid Prototyping for Competitive Advantage, a unique report from Cheshire Henbury, is an essential strategic tool for dealing with the business and management issues surrounding rapid prototyping technologies. It cuts through the technical details and jargon to focus on the key issues that your company needs to address to achieve the full range of business benefits offered by the technologies. The report addresses application to new product development, tooling and manufacturing and provides detailed information and advice on:

Strategy - the use of rapid prototyping to support the achievement of existing strategic objectives like reducing time to market for new products as well as enabling new strategic objectives like cost effective customisation.

Innovation - applying the technologies in ways that will enable both product and process innovations, thus assisting your firm in its quest to gain a significant edge over its competitors.

Organisation and people - addressing lement rapid prototyping technologies, to develop effective organisational structures and to better manage technical and organisational change.

Innovative features of the report:

Getting the key information quickly: A list of Key Action Points that provide you with a 10 point description of the essence of the report, an Executive summary to give you an overview of the essential issues, a Reading Guide to help you make a quick selection of the topics of most interest to you, and individual chapter summaries and annotated comments in margins to provide you with rapid access to key information.

Developing a High Level View: A 17 page introductory chapter providing you with a crisp and precise "helicopter view" of what is important and how to proceed.

Understanding key points of applications: 31 real examples drawn from several industries, each classified according to important themes and each analysed to illustrate the key points.

Tailored to non-specialists: Jargon free non-technical overviews and descriptions of the technologies.

Focused on issues as well as "how-to" information: Descriptions of the major issues complemented by detailed advice on how to proceed in a structured way with business case analysis, technology selection and implementation.

This report will help you to:

Understand application potential - by providing overviews and analysis of application examplt rapid prototyping technologies - by providing a checklist of factors which should be addressed when comparing the different available technologies.

Paul T. Kidd is a freelance researcher, consultant and author. Since 1983 he has been working at the leading edge of efforts to define, develop and implement new manufacturing and business philosophies. He has considerable experience in this field and is an internationally recognised expert in the areas of agile manufacturing enterprises and the implementation of new technologies and organisational structures.

Paul has undertaken work for both large and small companies, and has acted as an adviser to the UK Government's Department of Trade and Industry, as well as international agencies, including the European Commission in Brussels. He has participated in several major international projects and has lectured widely throughout the world on topics of strategic importance to industry.

Paul is the author of the world's first and leading book dealing with the emerging topic of agile business practices, entitled "Agile Manufacturing: Forging New Frontiers". He is also the author of the best selling management report entitled "Revolutionising New Product Development", published in 1997 by Financial Times Automotive Publishing, which deals with the globalisation of product design capabilities in the automotive industry. In 2001 he wrote another leading management report entitled "E-business Strategy: Case Studies, Benefits and Implementation, published by Cheshire Henbury.

Rapid prototyping technologies are a means of manufacturing that involves building components layer by layer. These layered models can then be used by designers for analysis. They can also be further processed to rapidly create prototype tooling which can then be used to manufacture prototype components. The technologies can also be used to create production tooling, and even to rapidly manufacture production components in low volumes. So rapid prototyping technologies are in fact a set of processes for the rapid production of models, prototypes, tooling and final components.

Typical reported benefits are often significant. On the production of prototype components, time reductions as high as 90% in comparison with existing standard prototyping methods have been reported. The exact time saving that can be achieved on the production of prototype components seems to depend on the complexity of the parts. Large cost savings have also been reported, ranging from 40% to 70%, but many companies do not have accurate information on the costs of new product development, so these figures should be treated with some caution. Nevertheless, even if cost saving have been overestimated by a factor of two, the likely savings will still probably be significant. The potential time and cost savings mean that the technologies are worth considering as part of a larger effort focused on reducing new product development costs and time to market.

Market turbulence is becoming an increasingly important issue. This turbulence is caused by many factors, including the pace of technological developments, more diverse and ever-changing niche markets, increased competition, and demanding customer expectations. The rapidly changing, uncertain and unpredictable nature of the business environment has exacerbated the prevailing high-risk nature of business activities. Rapid prototyping technologies must therefore be addressed within the context of market turbulence. The key question to consider is how rapid prototyping technologies can help firms deal with this type of environment, for example by improving operational change competencies and helping to improve knowledge of customer's requirements.

The real value of these new technologies therefore has to be assessed strategically. The technology has to be viewed from two perspectives. The first is attainment of business objectives like reducing time to market. The second is the potential to enable new business and marketing strategies and provide capabilities to respond to unexpected changes in the marketplace. There are several dimensions to this. For example, can the technologies be used to: help enter new markets, for example by lowering entry barriers; increase market share, for example by using the time saving to explore more design options to create more innovative products that customers will value; change the rules of competition, for example by offering customers individually customised products with no time or cost penalty.

Only through considering the strategic potential can the full range of benefits be accurately determined. This also implies that a strategic decision needs to be taken about whether to develop in-house capabilities or to outsource rapid prototyping by using bureau services, or some combination. Development of supply chain partnerships is also relevant should some degree of outsourcing be adopted.

As there are hidden benefits, so there are hidden costs. These stem from two sources. The first source of hidden cost stems largely from: the need to possibly modify existing computer-aided design systems; additional secondary technologies required to transform models into tooling and components; further equipment required to reduce and eliminate health and safety risks; and so on.

The second source of hidden costs stems from organisational and human resource issues. These amount to more than just the obvious training costs associated with learning how to operate the new equipment. The main additional cost is that associated with organisational changes which are likely to be needed for several reasons.

First, technical features of the technologies will create new demands upon the organisation for co-ordination, communications; etc. Moreover, because of the wide range of potential applications, the technologies could be located in several places: in new product development units, in prototyping shops, in production, or even in some combination. Whatever decisions are taken about location, this will add further requirements for co-ordination etc.

Organisational changes are considered an important factor for the successful application of rapid prototyping technologies. Such changes should be designed to promote culture change, team working, more open communications, and so on. These will bring benefits such as improved cross-functional understanding, shorter lead times and lower costs.

Given the complexity of the business and organisational issues involved, a comprehensive analysis involving strategic, technical and organisational assessments is recommended. At the end of these assessments an accurate cost/benefit analysis can be undertaken and decisions taken on the basis of strategic analysis and return on investment calculations. If the benefits are not significant enough to justify capital investments in the technologies then an appropriate way forward may be to make use of rapid prototyping bureaux. However, if the services of bureaux are used it is important to review this decision regularly. Rapid changes in the technologies may quickly render invalid, the assumptions used in the business case justification. Supply chain management issues such as alignment of vision, development of open and effective communications, development of commitment to generating long-term mutual benefits, etc. also need to be considered. The costs associated with these issues must therefore be factored into the cost/benefit analysis.