MATERIALS • PROCESSES • FINISHES


prioritised and progressed according to timeframe. Product development and project managers tend to focus on ensuring that all the required components are available by a certain date. In the worst cases, only once the components have arrived do engineers start worrying about how, and indeed whether, these components will fit together.


Te number of tolerance and assembly issues identified at this stage is higher than many would care to admit. Fixturing can also cause problems, because investment in adequate work-holding equipment when adding remaining components is often the first to go in the drive to reduce


project costs. Tis is, of course, a false economy: awkward working processes caused by incorrect fixturing can result in both damage to, and sub-standard assembly of, the prototype.


A SOLUTION TO THE PROTOTYPE PROBLEM It’s clear that prototype development needs a new approach. By focusing on wider objectives of getting a product to market and into production, the solution is challenging but achievable. Each step in the prototype manufacture and assembly process must be driven by the objectives of final


production. Overall risk, cost and time can be reduced, while increasing the chances of accurate production, reducing final assembly time and lowering the cost of re-work.


A NOVEL APPROACH Production-oriented prototyping (POP) is a novel approach to prototype development that involves both the individual component and full assembly designers from the start of the application development phase. Te aim is to build production standards into the prototype, while minimising cost and delivery time, as well as optimising safety.


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