PRODUCT DESIGN OPTIMIZATION
The competitive nature of Product Design and manufacturing has created an increase in efforts to improve products and associated processes. There are many new design strategies and software packages that review and test product performance and manufacturing. Product design optimization has now become a regular part of every product development cycle. Unfortunately with the many different groups of engineers, manufacturers, and purchasing departments; this optimization becomes very difficult and riddled full of different options and strategies. It is for this reason that many products are flawed and in some cases they literally cannot perform their basic functions without breaking for failing in basic operation. The manufacturing process is also an aspect that can negatively affect the product design by creating variations in material, dimension, or assembly to the point where even though the product design is excellent, it cannot tolerate the problems created in manufacturing. The product design, material selection, and manufacturing must combine together in a cooperative process. If any one of these is of poor quality, the entire project may fail. It is for these reasons that computer simulation has been implemented to improve these tasks before any product has been started. It is better to test and confirm the designs and manufacturing processes before anything is machined. This can save months or years of development and $1,000s to $100,000 of dollars.