Design for Manufacture and

Assembly
Presented by
Dr. Syed Farhan Raza

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 Product life cycle::Designing
 The necessity for a typical product is originated as a
result of customers’ and markets’ demands.
 The product involves two main process from its
concept/inception to its marketing/finished form
which are as follow;
1. Designing process
2. Manufacturing process
 Designing process consists of two main sub processes
which are called the synthesis and analysis.

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Product life cycle

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 Product life cycle::Designing
 Synthesis implies the philosophy, functionality, and
novelty/uniqueness.
 In synthesis, the design is defined by sketches and layout
drawing showing several relationships among the various
product parts. These sketches may be drawn either by hands on
a drawing sheet or by suitable CAD/CAM system. These design
instructions may further be used in various brainstorming
discussions among design teams for presentation purposes.
 At the stage of analysis, the design syntheses is put into the
context of engineering knowledge to figure out the performance
of the expected product. This leads a designer towards
modelling and simulation.
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 Product life cycle::Designing
 Various design problems are attempted to be fixed at
analysis stage of designing process.
 Finally, an engineering document in the form of
comprehensive drawings (blueprints) are resulted by
analysis.
 Of course, the word "design" has many different
meanings. To some it means the aesthetic design of a
product such as the external shape of a car or the colour,
texture, and shape of the casing of a can opener. In fact
the term “design”, however, is more involved.
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 Product life cycle::Manufacturing
 Process planning is the starting point of manufacturing
process and the actual product is its ending point.
 Process planning is deemed to be the backbone of
manufacturing because at the heart of planning is the
determination of the best and efficient sequence of
processes to manufacture/fabricate/produce a product.
 Pre-requisites for a process planner are the proper
awareness and update knowledge about various
aspects of manufacturing.

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 Product life cycle::Manufacturing

 Blueprints are thoroughly focused and

communicated, as per needs, with the design
team to request any change in it to fix any
manufacturing problems.
 A process planning, therefore, results in a
comprehensive production plan, tools
procurement, material order, machine
programming, and special manufacturing needs
e.g. jigs, fixtures and inspection gauges.
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 Product life cycle::Manufacturing
 At the end of process planning phase, product
manufacturing starts. The produced parts are inspected
and these parts/products are desired to pass certain
standards of quality control/assurance.
 Parts survived during inspection are assembled,
packaged, labelled, and shipped to market for customers.
 Market feedback is usually combined with the design
process.
 This feedback then complete the closed loop of product
cycle.
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 Summary of designing and
manufacturing activities
 Interpretation of the word "design" would be the
detailing of the materials, shapes, and tolerance
of the individual parts of a product.
 It is an activity starting with sketches of parts and
assemblies; progressing to the CAD terminals,
where assembly blueprints from detailed part
drawings are created.

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 Summary of designing and
manufacturing activities
 These drawings are then delivered to the manufacturing and
assembly engineers whose work it is to optimize the processes
used to yield the final product.
 Frequently, it is at this stage that manufacturing and assembly
difficulties are faced and requests are made for design changes.
 Sometimes these design changes are large in number and result in
considerable delays in the final product release.
 In addition, the later in the product design and development cycle
the changes occur, the more expensive they become.
 Therefore, not only is it important to take manufacture (M) and
assembly (A) into account during product design, but also these
considerations must occur as early as possible in the design cycle.
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 What is manufacture and
assembly?
 Manufacture is referred to the manufacturing of
the individual component or part of a product or
assembly.
 Assemble stand for the addition or joining of
parts to form the completed product.
 Hence assembly may not be considered a
manufacturing process in the same sense that
machining, moulding, etc., are manufacturing
processes.
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 What is design for manufacture (DFM)
and design for assemble (DFA)?
 The term "design for manufacture" (DFM) is
defined as the design for ease of manufacture of
the collection of parts that will form the product
after assembly.
 Likewise, "design for assembly" (or DFA)
implies the design of the product for ease of
assembly.
 Thus, "design for manufacture and assembly"
(DFMA) is a mixture of DFA and DFM.
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 DFMA::Historical Background
 In the 1960s there was much talk about designing products so
they could be manufactured more easily. Recommendations
commonly known as producibility guidelines were
developed. Therefore, costs are ultimately saved as a result of
these guidelines.

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 DFMA::Historical Background

 The advancement of the original DFA method

stemmed from earlier work in the 1960s on
automatic handling.
 A group technology classification system was
developed in the same year to catalogue
automatic handling solutions for small parts. It
became obvious that the classification system
could also help designers design parts that would
be easy to handle automatically.
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 DFMA::Historical Background

 In the mid-1970s the U.S. National Science Foundation

(NSF) presented a considerable grant to extend this
approach to the general areas of DFM and DFA.
 Essentially, this meant categorizing product design
features that significantly affect assembly times and
manufacturing costs and quantifying these effects.
 At the same time, the University of Salford in England
was awarded a government grant to study product
design for automatic assembly.
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 DFMA::Historical Background
 A major breakthrough in DFA implementation was appeared in
1988 when Ford Motor Company reported that our DFA software
had helped them save billions of dollars on their Taurus line of
automobiles. Later, it was reported that General Motors (GM)
compared between its assembly plant at Fairfax, Kansas, which
made the Pontiac Grand Prix, and Ford's assembly plant for its
Taurus and Mercury Sable models near Atlanta. GM has found a
large productivity gap and concluded that 41% of the gap could be
traced to the manufacturability of the two designs. For example, the
Ford car had fewer parts—10 in its front bumper compared with
100 in the GM Pontiac—and the Ford parts fit together more easily.
[Womak, J.P., Jones, D.T., and Roos, D., The Machine that Changed
the World, Macmillan, New York, 1990.]
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 DFMA::Historical Background
 Unsurprisingly, GM has now become one of the leading users of
DFMA. In fact, a GM executive has stated that:
1. DFM/DEA is a primary driver of quality and cost improvement.
2. It impacts every system of the vehicle.
3. It is an integral part of engineering and manufacturing employee
training.
4. It provides knowledge and capabilities for individuals and
organizations.
5. It provides technical improvements to both product and process.
6. It's not an option—it's a requirement.

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 DFMA

 Once ways for investigating assembly difficulties

were established in the 1970s it became
familiarized that there existed a conflict between
producibility and assembly.
 It was found that the simplification of products
by decreasing the number of discrete (separate)
parts through DFA (50% on average) could easily
achieve substantial drops in assembly costs.

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 DFMA

 More important, however, was the fact that even

more savings could be achieved in the overall
cost of the parts.
 The ability to estimate costs for both assembly
and part manufacturing at the earliest stages of
product design is the essence of DFMA.

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 DFMA

 Another reason why vigilant consideration of

manufacture and assembly should be considered
early in the designing phase; as it is now widely
believed that over 70% of final product costs are
determined during design.

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DFMA

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 DFMA
 Thus, in addition to reducing product costs, the application of design for
manufacture and assembly (DFMA) shortens the time to bring the product
to market.

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 DFMA :: Traditional Designers

 Traditionally, the attitude of designers has been

"we design it, you build it.“
 This has now been designated as "over-the-wall
approach" where the designer is sitting on one
side of the wall and throwing designs over the
wall to the manufacturing engineers, who then
have to deal with the various manufacturing
difficulties arising because they were not
involved in the design phase.
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DFMA :: Traditional Designers

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 DFMA :: A Remedy for Traditional
Designers
 One way of overcoming this problem is to consult
the manufacturing engineers at the design stage.
 The resulting consultation avoids many
complications. However, these teams based on
personnel from designing and manufacturing
departments, now called simultaneous engineering
or concurrent engineering teams, require analysis
tools to help them study proposed designs and
evaluate them from the perspective of
manufacturing difficulty and cost.
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 DFMA :: Hewlett Packard
Loveland
 DFMA efforts at Hewlett Packard Loveland were
started in the mid-1980s with redesigning of existing
products and continued with application to new
product design.
 During these studies, proved increasingly successful,
product development comprised one to three
manufacturing engineers interacting frequently with
the R&D team members.
 Eventually, by 1992, HP Loveland had incorporated
DFMA into a formal concurrent engineering approach.
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DFMA :: Cost Reduction in
Hewlett Packard Loveland

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