Pragmatic Approach to Apply Virtual Reality Technology in Accelerating a Product Life Cycle

Today, industries are facing tremendous pressures from the global economy, the increase of customer expectations and demands, and the exponential increase of product complexities, to name a few. To survive in the competitive market, the industries need to develop innovative products and increase product quality while decreasing product costs and shortening time-to-market. In order to remain competitive, the companies have been making their efforts to reduce operating costs and make product development efficient and effective by applying computer technology and introducing new design methodologies and processes. Virtual reality (VR) and virtual prototyping (VP) techniques are the novel technologies that the cutting-edge organizations are willing to adopt in developing and manufacturing their products. Even though these computer technologies are promising, simply adopting them can not bring an organization benefits because they are still under extensive development and have not overcome some limitations. Thus, by taking successful project examples which were conducted by Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation, this paper analyzes current computer interactive visualization technology and discusses how VR and VP should be applied in product development and a product life cycle.