Project Title: Role of CAD in product Innovation

Supervisor: Prof B K Chakravarthy

The In today’s highly competitive and global market, innovation is the most important strategy for any company to survive. Creativity forms the base for innovation. In other words, successful implementation of a creative idea leads to innovation. With various CAD tools becoming ubiquitous today it is affecting the ways designers work and approach a problem in various ways. CAD acts as a common thread between various phases of product development. It provides a common communication language between design, development, manufacturing and communication tools. Hanna and Barber (2001) mentions that the conventional design process like sketching, bending wires, clay, paper folding, etc has a well established formal structure of analysis-synthesis- evaluation- presentation. However, the computerized design process does not have any such established structure and is more like an added activity. The research attempts to explore the way CAD tools affect a designer’s work and creativity and the role it plays in the product innovation, using case study research methodology. This being a very broad area further narrowing down is required to be done after the literature review.

Contact details:
Industrial Design Centre,
IIT Bombay ,
Powai, Mumbai 400076

Telephone:
091-022-25767812

E-mail: purba_joshi[at]iitb.ac.in