Product Development Center

Introduction

The PD Center at PSU has a service-oriented delivery model that focuses on developing new products from concept to reality. Using the PLM based development process, it can harness the necessary skills required from various pre-arranged internal, and external, domain specific specialists to support the product development process and ensure the maximum chance of success is realized. It is also aimed to provide education through on-the-job training and workshops, and technical assistance to local businesses and industries in their existing product chains. The center with its fully dedicated staff, and together with the latest in-house technology, forms an entity that assist its stakeholders in various fields such as research, training and complete product development suite. The stakeholders for the PD Center constitues from diverse background such as PSU Academic staff and researchers as well as external researchers requiring access to best-in-class tools and facilities, PSU students (coursework), Engineers (short courses) and Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs (short trainings and access to PLM) and importantly Saudi Start-ups (or university Spin-out companies) wishing to validate their ideas and concepts prior to obtaining Seed or Series-A venture capital.

Mission

The Product Development (PD) Center at Prince Sultan University (PSU) is a turn-key product realization extension of the PSU Industry 4.0 center. During the various product development lifecycle stages, where physical models ranging from shape equivalent models to prototypes or even fully functional production models, are required, the product can be realized as a reality in the PD Center.

Facilities

The PD center works closely with the Industry 4.0 center. The Industry 4.0 center has fully developed lab facilities that are shared by the PSU-PD center. In addition, the PSU-PD center has acquired the state of art prototyping machines that can easily build a functional prototype of the real component using the 3D design and embedded Product Manufacturing Information of the component from the PLM software. (3D Printers, Laser Cutting Machine, CNC Machine, Modeling Tools & Materials etc.)

Cooperation

Additionally, the PSU-PD center has a MoU with the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh. Through this MoU, PSU-PD center has the extended capability to serve the community and industrial organizations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KACST is very-well known for its capabilities in research and development with the state of art equipment facility. The PSU-PD center in collaboration with KACST can produce a prototype of a metallic component if there a need for the development of such a component. In a similar manner to the KACST ultra-precise manufacturing capabilities, the PSU PD Center will act on behalf of its stakeholders as portal to other vetted and certified Product Development Support Centers. These centers will cover critical aspects required for product development in the connected era of Industry 4.0 such as mechatronics, integrated systems, optics, electric, electronic, composites, software applications as well as systems design and testing capabilities. In this manner, the PSU PD Center can be a turn-key solution for product development for its stakeholders new to the Product Development and Realization arena. In short, the PD Center will allow Saudi entrepreneurs and designers to focus on innovation and to not re-invent, or be stopped by not having access to, production realization capabilities.

Projects