Tag: rapid prototyping

OM in the News: Agile Project Management is Driving Hardware Innovation

The agile principles of project management (our topic in Chapter 3) are rapid iteration, cross-functional collaboration and customer-centric design. They have transformed and accelerated software development for several years. These agile principles are now becoming more popular in hardware development as well, writes Industry Week (Jan. 24, 2025). Here’s how:

Continuous prototyping: Agile hardware teams leverage rapid prototyping and digital twins to iterate on designs in faster and faster time cycles, reducing the time from concept to production and increasing the amount of iteration and innovation.  For example, Omnirobotic creates and manufactures robots that automate challenging industrial tasks and leverage rapid prototyping and cloud-native CAD to accelerate their product development process. By quickly iterating on 3D-printed prototypes and incorporating feedback into their designs, they have significantly reduced development time and improved efficiency.

Integrated digital workflows: Cloud-native platforms enable hardware teams to be much more agile. One reason: they enable real-time collaboration across global teams, breaking down silos between design, engineering and manufacturing. Everyone will work from a single source of truth, accelerating innovation.

Agile teams and supply chains: Many factors—including new tariffs, regulations, supply chain disruptions, war, politics, etc.—are causing companies to need to change suppliers, locations, products and personnel faster than ever. Cloud-native tools and agile process support this. There’s simply no time to deal with old-fashioned special computers, software installs and file-based copying.

Customer feedback loops: Agile product development will prioritize early and frequent customer feedback, ensuring that products meet real-world needs and reduce the risk of costly redesigns. With cloud-based computer-aided design (CAD) and product life cycle management (PLM) tools –as seen in Chapter 5– manufacturers can interact with digital prototypes in real-time, leaving comments, annotations and suggested modifications directly in the design. Additionally, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can allow manufacturers to experience digital models in immersive environments and provide contextual feedback before manufacturing begins.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Explain the difference between “agile” and “waterfall” approaches to project management.
  2. What are the features in agile that make it useful in hardware and software development?

OM in the News: It’s Ikea’s World

At Ikea’s distribution center in Älmhult, Sweden, pallets are stacked and retrieved through a fully automated process.
At Ikea’s distribution center in Älmhult, Sweden, pallets are stacked and retrieved through a fully automated process.

In a stunning global expansion, the Swedish home furnishings giant has been quietly planting its blue and yellow flag in places you’d never expect. “Pay attention, Wal-Mart:” writes Fortune (April 6, 2015),  “You could learn a few things.” Ikea, it seems, is a genius at selling Ikea—flat packing, transporting, and reassembling its quirky Swedish styling all across the planet. The furniture and furnishings brand is in more countries than Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Toys “R” Us.

In an industry where the product is often passed down from generation to generation, Ikea has shaken up the paradigm. It kept its prices down with an obsessive focus on costs. It might skip an extra coating of lacquer on the underside of a table that people never see or use. The company has also stripped out as much labor as possible from the system, pushing tasks that were once done by traditional retailers onto the customer. Flat packed furniture made it easier for customers to take purchases with them, cutting out the expense of stocking and delivery. (Ikea figured out flat packing in 1956, when a designer took the legs off a Lövet table to get it in his trunk.) The magic of flat packing allows goods to be jammed into shipping containers without wasting any space. Wasted space means wasted money and is also environmentally unfriendly. “I hate air,” says Ikea’s head of packaging.

The firm’s success, in large part, is based on improving its product design. As much as it has doubled down on market research and logistics, Ikea has been relentless in its focus on design. Ikea comes up with some 2,000 new products every year. Products under development go through rapid prototyping in the pattern shop to provide a sense of what they will actually look like in the flesh. During Fortune’s visit, one of the four 3-D printers was outputting a toilet brush. If air is the enemy in shipping, it is the ally in design. “The more air in our products, the better,” says Ikea.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. What operations strategies are key to Ikea’s success?

2. How pleased are students who have had to assemble the products themselves?