Welcome to Design for Purpose, a blogging site where experiences and knowledge on Design for Manufacturability (DFM) can be shared. Anyone who is serious about improving his or her design capability in DFM should join this blog and share knowledge with others who will also share knowledge.
One cannot expect to know it all and the pressure of being short staff adds to a well developing Burn-out. If we are too busy when times are bad and still too busy when times are good, when do we have time to increase knowledge to become more competitive? Competitivity is not reached by cutting staff, cost, and strangling suppliers. Competitivity is reached by acquiring knowledge that will make us more efficient.
DFM is a philosophy to achieve excellence by designing quality into the product. When considering that 60% of your fabrication cost is committed by design when you reach PDR, it makes sense to spend that time defining how the product will be produced, as further down the design process it becomes more and more difficult to reduce cost.
DFM is important to implement because the majority of manufacturing defects occur due to design-related issues. The success in creating a “manufacturable” product depends upon clearly defining product goals reflecting physical and functional requirements of the customer. Products designed using DFM philosophy will allow the following added values:
- Virtually defect-free or robust product design
- Waste-free manufacturing
- 100 percent usable COTS
- Minimal maintenance and service
- Total customer satisfaction.
It is the mission of this Blog to increase and improve DFM knowledge. Come in and share knowledge, ask for advice, learn.
As someone who "backed" into mechanical design engineering from the foundation of being a machinist/tool & die maker, I find the concept of DFM rather interesting. When I first started working the design side of the street, EVERY engineer had at least a FAMILIARITY with machine tools and processes. You had to have at least SOME "cutters and chips" experience while pursuing your BSME. Those days are past.
ReplyDeleteI argue that THIS is the "lack" that is hitting use the worst. I often ask engineers when the last time they set-up and solved a differential equation was. The answer is usually some form of "not since college." Whereas -I- rarely go more than a month without defining some differential relationship, this is a fairly extreme exception -- and THIS is where the emphasis in engineering education lies.
One of my personal pet peeves is tap drills (more properly called "pilot holes"). Few engineers today understand them. Many of the very expensive CAD tools we use today apply them poorly at best. This is not rocket science, but it may as well be in terms of the knowledge most design engineers have on the subject. If you want to look at a cost impact point, this is it -- and we are all too often failing in these otherwise trivial arenas.