Importance of Design to Manufacturing

 

Importance of Design to Manufacturing

What is Design for Manufacturing?

Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFM or DFMA) is a critical part of the product development cycle. This involves optimizing your product design for its manufacturing and assembly process, merging the product's design requirements with its manufacturing process. Using DFM techniques reduces the cost and difficulty of producing a product while maintaining its quality.

Why is design important to manufacturing?

Cost Reduction: About 70% of the cost of manufacturing a product can be derived from design decisions such as materials and manufacturing methods. The remaining 30% of costs are manufacturing decisions such as process planning and equipment selection. Focusing on design optimization reduces production costs.

Streamlined production scale-up: The struggle of hardware development comes from scaling from prototyping to production. Considering DFM from the beginning of the product development cycle can reduce redesign work, improve product quality, and speed your time to market.

Fundamentals of effective design for manufacturing

Standardization: Standardization cuts costs by reducing inventory and scale-up needs. Here are some ways to think about part standardization:

• Design parts that can be reused within a product or shared between product lines.

• Standardize your hardware across your products to reduce inventory needs.

• Make your designs modular to simplify product changes or redesigns.

• Use standard components instead of custom-made components wherever possible.

Design Simplicity: Simplifying your design cuts down on the time and inventory needed to make your product, which correlates to its cost. To simplify your product, you can:

• Reduce assembly steps and inventory by making multi-functional parts.

• Use quick securing methods such as designed coupling or snap fits. Fastening techniques including bolting or gluing take longer to secure and require more inventory.

• Quickly test your advanced designs with 3D printed prototypes.

Assembly and Compliance: Errors in assembly can damage parts or equipment, reduce yield, or cause line shutdowns. Tweak your designs for slope, misalignment, and tolerance stackup by doing any of the following:

• Resolve assembly issues by analyzing how tolerances will stack up in your assembly.

• Design integrated part features to help with alignment during assembly.

• Add tapers or chamfers to guide components during assembly insertion steps.

Setup Time Reduction: Reduce setup time by reducing the number of operations required per part or by simplifying assembly steps with 3D printed fixtures and workflow improvements.

• Minimize the number of setups or rotations required for each part or assembly.

• 3D print custom workholding to cut setup time and assist workers with assembly, inspection and assembly.

• Evaluate where your line can be upgraded with improved tools or workstations.

Where to start designing for manufacturing

Communication: Iteration in product design goes both ways. Work with the people on the factory floor to iterate and improve your design, because they've experienced many production problems firsthand!

Process: Which production method is most cost-effective for production? Add, subtract, or form? Well-designed parts must be optimized for their manufacturing process - and can even take advantage of that to further simplify the design. Analyzing the manufacturing process of each part can lead to simpler setups and operations to reduce part costs.

Materials: Your material choice can affect your cost, part quality, and manufacturing method. What characteristics does your part need? How many cycles should it last? Are there any weight requirements?

Infrastructure: How is your production line set up and supported? As you optimize a part design for its manufacturing process, you can optimize your manufacturing workflow for its manufacturing facility.