Sometimes new concepts need to be experienced to be trusted. You build something and watch as an idea or concept comes to life. But what if, once constructed, you realize that it isn’t as you imagined your product would be? That by walking around and building your project, you discover that the real product or finished assembly has inconsistencies, flaws or errors that are not evident in concepts or designs until you experienced the build. At this point, what you have built is scrap, design changes will set you back weeks, if not months, and costs will certainly rise – if redesigning this late in the game is even an option. If it’s not, going to market with a less than perfect product or flawed process might be a reality you must come to terms with.

Or, what if you could work in a virtual world where you could bring your product to life—really experience building, operating, or maintaining it – without physically constructing a single thing. In this immersive Virtual Reality, you can walk around your product in a true-to-life environment at a 1:1 scale, looking at it, reaching for needed tools, and interact with your new product concepts as you, or your customers, would in real life. In this way, any unforeseen assembly, operating, and maintenance challenges that are not acceptable can be experienced in time to identify them and fix them. Fully digital, virtual, and before decisions are “cast in stone”.

With IC.IDO this – and much more – awaits you.

Releasing the production-intent product data, engineering, and optimizing production process plans for a new product creates complex engineering tasks, like the sourcing of production tooling, commissioning of facilities, and workforce planning-preparation for production launch. During prior product engineering tasks, the assumption is that production requirements and service requirements may trigger product design changes. Design for Manufacturing and Design for Service, activities initiated during those early engineering integration reviews, should yield benefits in terms of the overall capability of the product to be made and supported, however now is the time to put that assumption to the test.

In the past, production pilots and prototype builds would have yielded much of the exploratory and development opportunity needed to plan for the upcoming product launch effectively. However, with the recent reliance on digital modeling instead of practical prototypes and piloting activities, there is an increased risk that production issues can go unobserved until production ramp-up. Such risk can be mitigated and removed as long as the new products can be appropriately modeled during the design and commissioning of the production tools, processes, and facilities.