Bringing a new product to market can be likened to that of a simple balancing game. There is a fine margin between producing something that not only gives a buyer everything they want but also what a business can realistically and economically manufacture. This compromise of creating a product for you and me, namely the customer, is not something that is undertaken by one person or an isolated team but by many knowledgeable stakeholders across the business.
So, how do we determine what is important to a consumer, and how do we feed those needs and wants into the product development process? Well, after all the customer, competitor, and industry marketplace research has been undertaken and a basic concept drawn up, engineers are asked to provide detailed CAD data. The form, fit, and function, or F3 Framework, is used to determine a characteristic of each part or single component and therefore aids this phase of the process.
To cover this process in slightly more detail, the ‘form’ naturally describes the shape, dimensions, mass, and weight characteristics. The ‘fit’ sets out how it should physically interface with other parts, and the ‘function’ conveys the action that the part is designed to perform. These set of rules, originating from the market research, essentially delineate how each part should look and operate and are used by engineers to create a bill of materials (BOM) and keep track of the overall cost.
Every occasion when the physical properties of a prototype require adapting, then a new part or parts need to be recreated in CAD and indexed until the product has been signed off and given final approval. This circular process can sometimes take a long time to perfect in terms of getting the balance right between producing an assembled product that a customer can or can’t use and doesn’t break the bank or the climate to manufacture.
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