Working Paper Alfred P. Sloan School of Management Evaluating Prototyping Technologies for Product Design Evaluating Prototyping Technologies for Product Design Evaluating Prototyping Technologies for Product Design

Firms that design mechanical and electromechanical products confront a variety of difficult issues in their prototyping activities. For a given part, how can a choice among fabrication technologies be made? Where should investments in new prototyping technology be focused? How can new and existing prototyping technologies he evaluated? Our primary goal has been to develop a systematic method of evaluating prototyping processes in order to determine the best process for a given situation. A secondary goal has been to map the "space" of prototyping processes in order to determine future process development needs. Using data from a field study at the Kodak Apparatus Division, we have developed a systematic method for evaluating and selecting prototyping processes. Our data is drawn from (Da user survey of prototyping perceptions and needs, (2) a survey to determine the importance of various prototype part performance attributes, and (3) estimates of the fabrication time, cost, and part performance for 104 parts and four prototyping processes. Acknowledgements The research described in this paper was supported by the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing Program, an educational and research partnership between MIT and eleven major U.S. corporations. We are indebted to the Apparatus Division of the Eastman Kodak Company for providing data and insights for this research. A version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of the Third International ASME Conference on Design Theory and Methodology, 1991. Address all correspondence to this author at: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Room E53-390, Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 U.S.A.