subject: The Role Of Prototypes In Planning [print this page] A business or even an independent individual test plans to see if the endeavor that they would be undertaking is viable. An independent individual recalls and reviews his experiences to determine whether his future action would be positive or a tragedy. Men easily think that an expensive diamond ring would work when planning to propose to a girlfriend because it worked many times before to other people.
A business enterprise runs trial-and-errors to see if a certain product would sell or a certain construction would not collapse. However, it would be very costly if they would closely simulate the outcome just to see if they would succeed or not. That is why many companies include in their standard operating planning procedure the creation of a prototype.
There are companies that profit from prototyping as its core business. Usually, those businesses are middle entities mediating between a client and their suppliers. They take advantage of off shoring, a new business concept where they scout and buy cheaper resources overseas to make their projects more feasible allowing them to take advantage of rapid prototyping.
Prototyping rapid is made use of by companies who would like to come up with a scaled down version of a product before mass producing it. With rapid prototyping, a client is able to test and retest as well as make the necessary changes without having to waste time and other resources.
Lets take for example the creation of mobile phones. To create a new model of a mobile phone, the design person would need to come up with a prototype that shows how it would look like when produced. The phone's body should be colored and shaped first according to its function, second according to its market. rapid, Rapid tooling allows the design person to have the mobile phone in different color combinations as well as different designs without really having to spend on producing an actual fully functioning phone each time.
Although rapid, rapid tooling is just one part of finalizing a design, it should be monitored from the beginning to end. Since it makes use of high speed machines, and since someone still has to constantly check the quality of the prototypes before doing actual manufacturing of the item, repeated prototyping can still be considered as a waste of time.
