These days, on average, there are more than 30,000 new products introduced on the market on a yearly level. Besides, more than 627,000 new businesses are launched each year, which speaks volumes on how rapid and fast-growing the market has become.
Despite all that, nearly rapid prototyping is the lead technology when we speak about product development. If you want to launch a new product on the market, rapid prototyping is the way to go. It doesn’t matter if your company’s on the verge of mass-producing the next big toy for pets or the electronics component that will change the way IT professionals work; first, you have to prototype your invention.
Rapid prototyping is a group of procedures that fastly create prototype models of a wide range of products through computer-aided design (CAD) data. Thanks to the continuous development of materials and technology, the procedure is widely used in various industry sectors.
The procedure includes different manufacturing technologies, with the most usual rapid prototyping process being additive manufacturing or 3D printing. There are also other methods, such as the subtractive and compressive methods utilized for the prototyping of specific products for distinctive industry sectors.
This article discusses the most important ways how rapid prototyping can boost your business productivity, starting with simple ones such as defining your project goals to estimating production costs.
Rapid Prototyping Offers Complete Testing Prior Production
Rapid prototyping allows you to test your new product in the very early phase of its developing process. Developing a specific product usually requires plenty of time and needs different possible prototypes before the final choice is made.
For this reason, when you use rapid prototyping, you can detect design mistakes and make more refining changes fast, avoiding huge costs that can appear later if the flaws are not detected before the final production phase.
It Reduces Your Product Development Costs
This is major because reducing product development costs is essential, especially for small-sized businesses that have just started and practically every other business that needs to reduce the price as much as possible to be competitive on the market.
Rapid prototyping offers you superior control over your expenditures and allows you to reduce them while still manufacturing an excellent final product.
Besides, there are several ways it reduces the expenses for your prototype and your final product ready to be mass-produced, like reduced production time (shorter lead time), reduced repairing and machining costs, and decreased material costs.
Cost reduction is a great booster for every business, and rapid prototyping means saving precious time during the development phase. In this ultra-fast and ultra-competitive era we live in, time is money, so rapid prototyping is your friend when you’re trying to cut expenditures and launch your hit product on the global market faster.
It Offers The Possibility To Customize
Another great benefit that comes with rapid prototyping is the possibility of customization. For the customers and the global market to notice your next big product, customization and personalization are something that modern-day clients expect and can make your final product widely recognizable.
Also, customization is a tremendous benefit of the developing process, and you can use it when creating a prototype for a presentation to your potential clients, investors, or shareholders. This way, they can see the actual product presented, instead of just some photo along with a promise to include the characteristics they were looking for later on.
Since competitive advantage is essential in product design, additionally, for specific promotions or distinguished clientele, you might want to produce a unique and limited series of products. There’s no easier way to offer highly customized products than with rapid prototyping and 3D printing.
End Products With Greater Complexity
One more benefit that rapid prototyping offers is the complexity you can reach while manufacturing your new products. In some cases, the level of products’ complexity was so great that the companies have decided to shift to exclusively 3D printed and rapidly prototyped products because it surpasses the complexity and accuracy that their in-house machinery can ship.
Suppose you have seen a 3D printer while working. In that case, you know that it provides stunning visualization that you can not see elsewhere. The incredible complexity of inner parts as they are being fabricated will remain forever unmatched.
3D printing is massively used in the medical and healthcare industries for recreating body parts and implants that regular people later get during intricate surgical procedures and medical treatments.
Enhances Your Market Visibility
Rapid prototyping can help your company enhance its market visibility via market impregnation and market penetration. But what do these terms mean and refer to?
In brief, it means that the quicker you introduce your products to the market and the more products you deliver, the more recognition you will get.
So, the concept is quite simple, the faster you push your products out on the market, and as much as you increase the number of your products, then the more well-known your brand will be.
Therefore, rapid prototyping provides you with several considerable advantages in this area, like faster delivery of your product on the market, delivering a large number of product pieces in a short period, and most importantly, providing high-quality products.
The products created with rapid prototyping are of high standard thanks to the material tolerance in general and the extreme refinement of the process itself.
Final Words
As mentioned above in the article, by utilizing rapid prototyping techniques, companies have managed to detect design issues, evaluate production costs, save time, determine the use of proper materials, identify machinery for production and do an infinite number of tests before the product goes into the next stage of production.
So, if you want to boost your business productivity with rapid prototyping, read this article through and then carefully select the most suitable rapid prototyping strategy for your company’s needs.
