What is the meaning of Design for Manufacturing or DFM?
Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is the process of designing parts, components, or products for easy manufacturing with the ultimate goal of producing a better product at a lower cost. This is done by simplifying, optimizing and refining the product design. The abbreviation DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) is sometimes used interchangeably with DFM. We stay with DFM for the purposes of our blog post.
During a DFM five principles are examined. You are:
1. Process
2. Design
3. Material
4. Surroundings
5. Conformity / test
Ideally, DFM must be done early in the design process, long before tooling begins. In addition, properly executed DFM must include all stakeholders - engineers, designers, contract manufacturers, mold makers and material suppliers. The goal of this "cross-functional" DFM is to challenge the design - to look at the design at all levels: components, subsystem, system, and holistic levels - to ensure that the design is optimized and does not incur unnecessary costs.
The following table provides an excellent visual representation of the effect of an early DFM. As design goes through the product lifecycle, changes become more expensive and harder to implement. Early DFM services allowed you to quickly make design changes in the most cost-effective location.
5 PRINCIPLES OF DFM: A CLOSER LOOK
1 | PROCESS
The chosen manufacturing process must be correct for the part or product. They do not want to use a high capitalization process, such as injection molding, in which tools and dies are made to produce a low volume part that could be made by a lower capitalization method such as thermoforming. That would mean using a tank to crush an anthill - a classic case of overkill. Let's see what Jeff has to say about choosing the right manufacturing process:
2 | DESIGN
Design is important. The actual drawing of the part or product must conform to the good manufacturing principles for the manufacturing process you have chosen. Here's Jeff talking about the design of the mouse:
3 | MATERIAL
It is important that you choose the right material for your part / product. In this video, Jeff talks about some of the criteria that feed into this decision:
4 | SURROUNDINGS
Your part / product must be designed to withstand the environment to which it is exposed. The entire shape of the world does not matter if the part does not work properly under normal operating conditions:
5 | CONFORMITY / TEST
All products must comply with safety and quality standards. Sometimes these are industry standards, others are third-party standards and some are company-specific internal standards.
Technosoft Engineering offers array of engineering services such as engineering design services, rotating equipment design, food processing machinery design, volutes design, mining equipment design, electrical engineering services and many more in various sectors, such as general engineering, heavy equipment manufacturing, specialized machines , consumer electronics, medical devices, smart metering and in the oil and gas industry.
