Innovation & Technology

Historically a prototype has always been a physical representation of the product, in whole or divided in sub-systems. To create it you need to have a detailed design, in many cases you need to have some sort of production tools made. Hence, physical prototypes are created rather late in the development project and they are very expensive to produce. The problem arises when the prototype does not live up to expectations and the product has to be redesigned. I think you all know how painful it can be to go through late design changes.

Therefore most companies have introduced virtual prototypes, computer models.  The simplest form of virtual prototype is a geometric representation of the product, a CAD-model. But technology today offers so much more and virtual prototypes can be used to simulate almost any of the products functions (like mechanical and electrical behaviour for example). So now companies are using those virtual prototypes but surprisingly enough it does not always mean that the number of physical prototypes are decreased. There is a resistance in many organisations against relying on the results from simulations and virtual prototypes. There are a few steps that needs to be taken to overcome this problem.

First of all we who are working with the virtual prototypes need to market ourselves and our results in the rest of the development organisations. We have to make it understandable for those who are affected by the results but not familiar with the technology in all its aspects.

Secondly, development managers have to figure out what would motivate disbelievers in the organisation. For example, if your organisation are developing cars there are engineers who think that driving is the best part of their job. If you tell them that they will not get that many physical prototypes they will obviously protest and object to any virtual prototypes. So what can we do to motivate them in the work with virtual prototypes? Today there are driving simulators available. With these you can connect a virtual prototype to a physical driving environment … much like a very advanced computer game. With this type of technology you can give your people something that can motivate them while removing something else. Go through your groups one by one and make a plan for how to motivate them to work with virtual prototypes.

Virtual prototypes can help companies shorten their development lead time and lower development cost. But to be successful they have to guide and motivate their employees in how to use this technique.