Tomasz Taubert

It is all easy when the product development is process-driven, with the use of design controls. Per the project plan, one of the first deliverables is the product requirements document (PRD). It is either written by the stakeholders to match development team's requirements document, or it is written by the development team with stakeholders input, review and approval. Before the PRD is approved, and before design work begins, all conflicting requirements are identified and given to stakeholders to resolve that defect by deciding on reduced or new requirements. Always during the product development the stakeholders can request a change with conflicting requirements. That needs to be fixed by the stakeholders as above.

First at all, assess whether that is a dilemma at all. What are the two competing propositions in the situation? If the problem is not defined with two mutually excluding possible outcomes, it is not a dilemma.

Stakeholders changing product requirements and development team fixing defects always happen. All easy if product development is process-driven and uses design controls. There are always defects to be fixed in the product development process: defects are unintended deviations from the product functional requirements. Fixing defects does not hinge on whether the requirements don't change or whether the stakeholders request a change. It is the project manager's responsibility that the defects are fixed as scheduled. Stakeholders can always request a change to requirements at their financial and time cost. That will affect entire project, including fixing the defects. That is not the project manager's worry.

You just hire for designers professionals who graduated from manufacturing departments of engineering school where they were taught the theories and best practices of multiple manufacturing technologies, material science, DFM for those technologies and tooling design. Real manufacturing professionals rather than self-taught doers who were learning from other self-taught ones.

In a grownup process-driven product development that uses design controls, ergonomics AKA human factors of the product are specified in the Product Requirements Document and are implemented in the works right from the beginning, from the industrial design of physical product and user software interfaces.

Know all the AM technologies and materials. Otherwise you can miss picking the best one for the project on hand. APF DLP FGF MJF SAF Delving into sintered bound metal adds another layer of choices. CMF DLP FFF FGF