Current Trends in Product Development

This paper will summarize the authors’ experience over the last decades, from new methods developed and used within Product Development, as well as current trends. Hence a general and broad overview is presented, rather than recent research results.Driving forces in PD are: Technology, Market and Society. Ecological, economic and social sustainability require recycling, reuse, energy conservation and new business concepts. Customization is carried out by modular architecture, combining customer specific products with volume production of components and sub-systems. PD integrates “hard” properties (engineering), with “soft” properties (industrial design). Fundamental PD characteristics are: Iteration, Integration (technical and organizational), and Innovation. Globally distributed industrial partners co-operate using Internet. Iteration: process loops are speeded up by modeling/simulation, virtual prototyping and additive manufacturing. Structured PD: Initial specification of “what” – functional requirements, then “how” - generation of design solutions. Interdependencies analysis is important to simplify the product's structure. The V-model for specification and verification is commonly used. A 3-stage industrial process separates strategy, core technology development, and product design for market introduction.