Reverse engineering and rapid tooling as enablers of agile manufacturing

Rapid response manufacturing is a new manufacturing pattern that can be used to implement the concept of agile design and manufacturing, but there are some new problems associated with it. Rapid Prototyping (RP) is one of the enablers of Reverse Engineering (RE). Two separate studies have been carried out to verify the degree of the activities of RP as an enabler of RE. Results show that the product development cycle and cost have been reduced and that data can be accurately transferred between the different equipment without additional new software. Hence, RP is an enabler of agile manufacturing.