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Overview...

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) software guides engineers through the process of simplifying a product design, then quickly estimates assembly labour and part manufacturing costs. The software isolates the major cost drivers associated with a wide range of choices for part manufacture and finishing.

Through a quantitative, multidisciplinary approach to cost assessment, DFMA software helps companies create innovative, high-quality products that are more economical to manufacture. A considerable side benefit to the organisation is overall cost reduction. When products have fewer parts, companies can streamline suppliers, inventory, and shipping. When products are easier to manufacture, companies can improve factory throughput and overall resource use.

“We set our DFMA redesign goals at 50 percent for cost reductions in labor and assembly, and typically we meet or exceed those targets,” says Mike Shipulski, Director of Engineering at Hypertherm. “Our management is always happy about achieving these significant financial numbers, and they know that the total savings are far-reaching, extending beyond manufacturing to the reduction of facility, handling, and overhead costs.”

“At Solectron, we’re utilizing our deep expertise in product design and manufacturing to help OEMs improve product manufacturability and time-to-market, enhance quality and reduce costs through front-end collaborative design,” said J. W. Krueger, Senior DFM Engineer at Solectron. “The Boothroyd Dewhurst software application is a critical enhancement to Solectron’s NPI service offering. As part of Solectron’s mechanical design service, the DFMA capability enables us to help OEMs reduce product complexity and failure rates before prototyping even begins. Early identification of design issues significantly reduces costs and speeds up new products moving into production at lower costs.”

DFMA software contains an extensive set of industry-tested early cost models for material and manufacturing processes, including sheet metalworking, machining, structural foam molding, plastic extrusion, injection molding, thermoforming, blow molding, cold and hot die casting, hot forging, powder metal processing, sand casting, and investment casting. The latest release of the DFMA software adds two new processes for estimating manufacturing costs:

DFMA is best applied at the concept stage where at least 70% of the final cost for a product is fixed. It is here that the concurrent engineering design team needs quantitative tools that can place a cost figure on various design proposals. DFMA can also be used to benchmark competitors' products and to monitor vendor quotes. When DFMA is used as part of ISO9000 and QS9000 compliance in design and quality areas, it generates supporting quantification and documentation.

Documented benefits of Boothroyd Dewhurst's Design for Assembly software compiled from 88 published case studies include:

• Printed Circuit Board (PCB) process that incorporates cost models for bare board manufacture as well as population, or assembly, of the board.
• Automatic Assembly process that estimates the cost of assembling a product on an automatic high-speed assembly machine -and for comparison purposes, the software also computes the estimated cost of assembling the same product on a manual assembly line.

Click here to read about the DFMA Software and Training that has helped companies achieve such significant benefits.