Product designers are at a crossroads. According to Deloitte, one of the keys to consumer products companies thriving in the year 2024 and beyond lies in increasing product volume. To achieve this, it's imperative for design teams to adopt a faster and more efficient approach to design, iteration, and fabrication. Moreover, with the emergence of numerous competitors, the need to act swiftly has never been more crucial.

But how is it possible to meet this need to design faster along with other modern demands, like expand and diversify product lines, make sustainable considerations, and collaborate efficiently with remote, global teams, without sacrificing product quality in the end?

As design teams scramble to innovate on their toes under immense pressure, it's become clear that traditional product design tools and workflows simply don't cut it anymore. It's time for a digital transformation.

Agile product development: embracing a dynamic product design process

Product development was traditionally a siloed process that followed a linear path from concept development to design and engineering to testing and validation and to manufacturing and production. Each step along the way, from 3D modeling to simulation to CAM, would often require a different, highly expensive software to execute, leading to delays in bringing products to market and giving competitors an advantage as every day passes by.

To excel in today's competitive landscape, businesses must unlock the flexibility to seamlessly navigate between 3D modeling, simulation, drawings, CAM, PCB design and more, adapting designs as needed via an agile product development model. If a prototype doesn't work out, they need to jump back into their previous model without having to start from scratch. They need to be able to generate technical drawings to easily send out to external manufacturers. They need to quickly hop into their colleague's 3D model without having to download a hefty file via email. They need flexibility; that's the reality.

The only way to successfully embrace agile product development is to invest in a single, dynamic tool that encompasses all of these capabilities and more under one roof, enabling a true digital transformation. Modern product designers recognize that the process of bringing products to life is no longer linear—and they understand that their tools shouldn't be either. Real-time collaboration is key, as is the ability to hop from one tool to the next without time-consuming file transfers or manual updates needed every step of the way.

Autodesk Fusion: your gateway to agile product development

Autodesk Fusion is a cloud-based CAD, CAM, CAE, and PCB design software that enables seamless collaboration between designers, engineers, machinists, and other stakeholders. Fusion empowers designers to quickly iterate and refine their designs. Its intuitive interface and robust design tools enable rapid prototyping and exploration of multiple design options. With Fusion, designers can easily make changes, evaluate impact, and iterate on their designs in a flexible and agile manner. This accelerates the design process while ensuring that the final product meets the desired requirements.

"We're already planning for our next generation of equipment that we will design with Fusion," says Ari Pinkas, Co-founder, ORA Graphene Audio. "Last year, we were selling just a couple hundred parts per month and worked from what was essentially a closet. Now we're selling 20-40,000 per month and building a factory to produce at scale."

Fusion's integration of design, engineering and manufacturing tools eliminates the need for separate software or manual data transfer, saving time and reducing errors. It allows teams to work concurrently on the same project, facilitating real-time communication, feedback, and version control. This streamlines the collaboration process making it easy for teams to hop back and forth between stages of product development as their projects naturally evolve.

Image courtesy of Moose Toys.

Additionally, online and offline access to projects anytime, anywhere enables remote, global teams to communicate no matter the circumstances. And for design firms that collaborate with external manufacturers, Fusion makes it easy to share technical drawings with contractors and collaborators.

"Fusion offer[s] a balance where there were enough tools for the mechanical design engineers to do what we needed to do, such as simulating mechanisms and designing all the gearboxes and linkages. But it also still had the right tools for the product designers to be able to sculpt shapes," says Carl Budd, Engineering Manager, Moose Toys

Leveraging automation for faster time-to-market

With over 10 years of researching and exploring AI-powered solutions and automation for the design and manufacturing industries, Autodesk has established itself as a frontrunner in the space. Fusion, in particular offers a variety of automated tools that empower teams to bring unprecedented flexibility to their design and manufacturing workflows.

For designers and engineers, Drawing automation is a game-changing tool that saves teams significant time by automating the tedious steps of creating technical drawings. Configurations provide an intelligent way to maximize the utility of parametric designs by enabling teams to create and manage multiple design variations from a single, unified model. Additionally, generative design and automated modeling are AI-powered tools that help professionals improve design productivity and unlock new design ideas faster than ever.

"Fusion has allowed us to be braver in our work. What I mean by that is, we could grow our design team and pitch new projects without any concern about where we would find more money for additional licenses. Without Fusion, growth would have been much riskier."— Gethin Roberts, Founder, ITERATE

On the manufacturing side of product development, the demand for faster processes to improve efficiency and throughput has never been higher. The CloudNC CAM Assist Automation Add-in for Fusion 360 translates 3D models of 3-axis components into machining strategies in seconds to help teams meet these high demands.

Face modern product design challenges head-on

By leveraging agile product development and Autodesk Fusion, design teams can unlock their full potential in the competitive consumer product sector, stay ahead of the competition, and meet the ever-changing demands of customers. The path to success lies in breaking free from the constraints of traditional methods and embracing a flexible future.

Ready to embrace an integrated product design experience? Try Autodesk Fusion today.