## 4 Conclusions  
The use of 3D product models beyond product design is gaining traction in industry. Companies are moving away from 2D drawings and paper-based work instructions to take advantage of the value that 3D product models offer beyond product design in not only the assembly planning and design process but also in shop floor execution. This survey disproved the research team's first hypothesis that the majority of companies would fall under the category of having not yet implemented the 3D product model in the assembly process but planned to do so, as most companies had already implemented the 3D product model in their assembly process. While companies recognize that there is inherent value in applying the 3D product models beyond just product design, up to this point, much of that value is still described in ways that are very qualitative in nature. The research team failed to disprove the second hypothesis: that the value of using the 3D product model in the assembly process is expressed qualitatively and unknown quantitatively. Thus, future research focuses should include developing a more quantitative approach to the value companies can expect to gain when deploying 3D product models in the assembly planning and design process as well as in assembly shop floor execution. In one application of the 3D product model in the assembly process, a large agricultural equipment manufacturer transitioned from using Microsoft Excel to reconcile engineering change orders to using the 3D product model in combination with Proplanner's Assembly Planner. In the original process using an Excel sheet, the company spent almost seven hours updating work instructions following an engineering change order. In the new process, the company could complete the same update, with the 3D product model included in the assembly process work instructions, in just over two hours. This resulted in a savings of over four and a half hours per engineering change order and with over 1500 engineering change orders processed each year that is greater than 6500 man-hours saved per year. By integrating the 3D product model into the assembly process, and automating that through Proplanner's Assembly Planner, the organization is able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result. In another application of the 3D product model in the assembly process, a large automotive manufacturer uses the 3D product model to verify assembly interferencesbefore launching a product model change. The automotive manufacturer has a virtual assembly lab that allows them to complete such studies and check how a 3D product model change will work in the context of how it will integrate with tooling and the existing products already assembled onto the vehicle on the assembly line. The manager of the digital manufacturing group at this organization stated that the application of the 3D product model through the virtual assembly lab provides the company with a key competitive advantage over other automakers, where using the 3D product model in the assembly process saved millions of dollars in a new product launch. Beyond these examples, the results shown in Figure 11 are substantial because they provide a framework through which industry and academia alike can start to develop a quantitative model for the value of the 3D product model in the assembly process. These five value areas can be used to determine the value of implementing the 3D product model on a given assembly line, which is then summed across assembly lines in a plant and across assembly plants within a company to get the enterprise value of implementing the 3D product model in the assembly process. The paper also demonstrates findings on which value drivers are more applicable to different size organizations and which value drivers are recognized the most in given industries. Then, via the survey results and the five value areas determined, this paper creates the building blocks for quantifying the value of the 3D product model in the assembly process in future research.