Virtual product development (VPD) is the practice of developing and prototyping products in a completely digital 2D/3D environment. VPD has four main components:
- virtual product design (3D shape, 2D graphics/copy)
- virtual product simulation (drop test, crush test, etc.)
- virtual product staging (retail space planning, consumer research and behavior analysis)
- digital manufacturing (process planning, assembly/filling virtualization, plant design).
VPD typically takes place in a collaborative, web-based environment that brings together designers, customers/consumers, and value chain partners around a single source of real-time product “truth.” VPD enables practitioners to arrive at the right idea more quickly, and to accurately predict its performance in both manufacturing and retail settings, ultimately minimizing time to value, market failure potential, and product development costs.
Virtual Process Planning is a relatively new concept for manufacturing companies, although the concept has been in use for the construction industry for several years. BIM (Building Information Modeling) is the system used by many construction, architectural and contracting firms. The detail and scheduling aspects are some of the more valuable aspects of the system. By utilizing Virtual Process Planning, the entire production process can be designed to both maximize efficiency and avoid the trial and error method employed by most manufacturers.
Various software exists with differing levels of information. The placement of work stations, inventory, personnel and equipment can be valuable for space planning. The interaction of the previously mentioned can also be investigated, allowing the user to identify potential issues from safety, quality and ergonomic standpoints.
Famous quotes containing the words virtual, product and/or development:
“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)
“Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, naïve, optimistic, gullible.... In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)