Product Design and Development

Course Code: DME 811

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Spring 2023 (DME-811 PDD)

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Department of Design and Manufacturing Engineering

SMME-NUST, Islamabad
Week 15
1
 Today’s Lecture
Design for Manufacturing:
• DFM vs DFA
Differences
Similarities
• DFM Cost Analysis
• DFM Cost Analysis Procedure
• DFMA Guidelines
 Chapter 13

Design for Manufacturing

 Design for Manufacturing

• DFM utilizes information of several types, including:

• Sketches, drawings, product specifications, and design alternatives
• A detailed understanding of production and assembly processes
• Estimates of manufacturing costs, production volumes, and ramp-up timing
• DFM begins during the concept development phase, when the product’s
functions and specifications are being determined
• It consists of five steps plus iteration:
• Estimate the manufacturing costs
• Reduce the costs of components
• Reduce the costs of assembly
• Reduce the costs of supporting production
• Consider the impact of DFM decisions on other factors
Design for Manufacturing
 I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

• Estimate the manufacturing costs

• Manufacturing cost is the sum of all of the expenditures for the inputs of the system
and for disposal of the wastes produced by the system
• As the metric of cost for a product, firms generally use unit manufacturing cost, which
is computed by dividing the total manufacturing costs for some period (usually a
quarter or a year) by the number of units of the product manufactured during that
period
• This simple concept is complicated in practice by several issues:
• What are the boundaries of the manufacturing system?
• Should the field service operations* be included?
• What about product development activities?
• How do we “charge” the product for the use of expensive general-purpose
equipment that lasts for many years?
• How are costs allocated among more than one product line in large, multiproduct
manufacturing systems? *Different industries need support of field service agents like electrical
contractors, computer repair businesses, HVAC, plumbing & piping, and telecom
I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

A simple input-output model of a manufacturing system

I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

Elements of the manufacturing cost of a product

 I. Estimate the manufacturing costs
• Component costs
• The components of a product may include standard parts (motors, switches, electronic chips, and
screws) or custom parts (sheet steel, plastic pellets, or aluminum bars)
• Assembly costs
• Discrete goods are generally assembled from parts
• The process of assembling almost always incurs labor costs and may also incur costs for equipment
and tooling
• Overhead costs
• Overhead is the category used to encompass all of the other costs (e.g. accounting fees,
advertising, insurance, interest, legal fees, labor burden, rent, repairs, supplies, taxes, etc.)
• Support costs
• Costs associated with materials handling, quality assurance, purchasing, shipping, receiving,
facilities, and equipment/tooling maintenance (among others)
• These are the support systems required to manufacture the product, and these costs do greatly
depend upon the product design
• Indirect allocations
• Costs of manufacturing that cannot be directly linked to a particular product but that must be paid for
to be in business (e.g. salary of the security guard and the cost of maintenance to the building)
 I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

• Fixed Costs
• Fixed costs are those that are incurred in a predetermined amount,
regardless of how many units of the product are manufactured
• Purchasing the injection mold required for the new intake manifold is an
example of a fixed cost
• Whether 1,000 or 1 million units are produced, the fixed cost of the mold is
incurred and does not change
• Variable Costs
• Variable costs are those incurred in direct proportion to the number of units
produced
• The cost of raw materials is an example of Variable cost
• Assembly labor is sometimes considered a variable cost as well because
many firms can adjust the staffing of assembly operations by shifting
workers to other areas on short notice
I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

Estimation of total unit cost of a product

 I. Estimate the manufacturing costs

• Estimating the Costs of Standard Components

• The costs of standard components are estimated by either:
• Comparing each part to a substantially similar part the firm is already producing
or purchasing in comparable volumes, or
• Soliciting price quotes from vendors or suppliers
• The costs of minor components (e.g., bolts, springs, and inserts) are usually obtained
from the firm’s experience with similar components, while the costs of major
components are usually obtained from vendor quotes
• Estimating the Costs of Custom Components
• When the custom component is a single part, we estimate its cost by adding up the
costs of raw materials, processing, and tooling
• In cases where the custom component is actually an assembly of several parts, we
estimate the cost of each subcomponent and then add assembly and overhead costs
• The raw materials costs can be estimated by computing the mass of the part,
allowing for some scrap (5–50% for an injection molded part, and 25–100% for a
sheet metal part), and multiplying by the cost per unit mass of the raw material
 I. Estimate the manufacturing costs
• Tooling costs
• Tooling costs are incurred for the design and fabrication of the cutters, molds, dies, or fixtures
required to use certain machinery to fabricate parts
• For example, an injection molding machine requires a custom injection mold for every different type
of part it produces
• These molds generally range in cost from $10,000 to $500,000
• The unit tooling cost is simply the cost of the tooling divided by the number of units to be made over
the life of the tool
• Processing costs
• Processing costs include costs for the operator(s) of the processing machinery as well as the cost of
using the equipment itself
• Most standard processing equipment costs between $25 per hour (a simple stamping press) and
$75 per hour (a medium-sized, computer-controlled milling machine) to operate, including
depreciation, maintenance, utilities, and labor costs
• Assembly costs
• Assembly costs can be estimated by summing the estimated time of each assembly operation and
multiplying by a labor rate
• Assembly operations require from about 4 seconds to about 60 seconds each
 II. Reduce the Costs of Components
• Understand the Process Constraints and Cost Drivers
• Problem
• Some component parts may be costly simply because the designers did not understand the
capabilities, cost drivers, and constraints of the production process
• For example, a designer may specify a small internal corner radius on a machined part without
realizing that physically creating such a feature requires an expensive electro-discharge
machining (EDM) operation
• These costly part features might not even be necessary for the component’s intended function
• Remedy
• The design engineer needs to know what types of operations are difficult in production and what
drives their costs
• The constraints of a process can be concisely communicated to designers in the form of design
rules
• For example, the capabilities of an automatic laser cutting machine for sheet metal can be
concisely communicated in terms of allowable material types, material thicknesses, maximum
part dimensions, minimum slot widths, and cutting accuracy
• In such cases, part designers can avoid exceeding the normal capabilities of a process and
thereby avoid incurring unusually high costs
 II. Reduce the Costs of Components
• Redesign Components to Eliminate Processing Steps
• Reducing the number of steps in the part fabrication process generally results in reduced costs
• For example, aluminum parts may not need to be painted, especially if they will not be visible to the
user of the product
• A common example of this strategy is “net-shape” fabrication
• Typical examples include molding, casting, forging, and extrusion
• Choose the Appropriate Economic Scale for the Part Process
• The manufacturing cost of a product usually drops as the production volume increases
• Economies of scale for a fabricated component occur for two basic reasons:
• Fixed costs are divided among more units
• Variable costs become lower because the firm can justify the use of larger and more efficient
processes and equipment
• For example, if an injection-molded plastic part requires a mold that costs $50,000 and the firm
produces 50,000 units of the part over the product’s lifetime, each part will have to assume $1 of the
cost of the mold
• If, however, 100,000 units are produced, each part will assume only $0.50 of the cost of the mold
• As production volumes increase further, the firm may be able to justify a four-cavity mold, for which
each cycle of the molding machine produces four parts instead of one
II. Reduce the Costs of Components
II. Reduce the Costs of Components

• Machining
• Low fixed costs but high
variable costs
• Appropriate when few parts
will be made
• Injection molding
• High fixed costs and low
variable costs
• Appropriate when many parts
will be made
 II. Reduce the Costs of Components
• Standardize Components and Processes
• Standard components are those common to more than one product
• For example, the use of the 3.8-liter V6 engine in several GM cars is an example of internal
standardization
• The use of a common 10-millimeter socket head cap screw across several auto manufacturers is
an example of external standardization
• In either case, all other things being equal, the component unit cost is lower than if the component
were used in only a single product
• Adhere to “Black Box” Component Procurement
• A component cost reduction strategy used effectively in the Japanese auto industry
• The team provides a supplier with only a black box description of the component (what the
component has to do, not how to achieve it)
• This kind of specification leaves the vendor with the widest possible latitude to design or select the
component for minimum cost
• It also relieves the internal team of the responsibility to engineer and design the component.
• Successful black box development efforts require careful system-level design and extremely clear
definitions of the functions, interfaces, and interactions of each component
•
 III. Reduce the Costs of Assembly

• Design for assembly (DFA) is a fairly well-established subset of DFM that involves
minimizing the cost of assembly
• Integration
• If a part does not qualify as one of those theoretically necessary, then it is a
candidate for physical integration with one or more other parts
• The resulting multifunctional component is often very complex as a result of the
integration of several different geometric features that would otherwise be
separate parts
• Part integration provides several benefits:
• Integrated parts do not have to be assembled
• Integrated parts are often less expensive to fabricate than are the separate parts they
replace (Why?)
• Critical dimensions of integrated parts can be more precisely controlled
• Part integration is not always a wise strategy and may be in conflict with other
sound approaches to minimizing costs (e.g. composite materials)
 III. Reduce the Costs of Assembly

• Maximize Ease of Assembly

• Part is inserted from the top of the assembly: By using z-axis assembly for all parts,
the assembly never has to be inverted, gravity helps to stabilize the partial assembly, and
the assembly worker can generally see the assembly location
• Part is self-aligning: Parts and assembly sites can be designed to be self-aligning so
that fine motor control is not required of the worker
• Part does not need to be oriented: Parts requiring correct orientation, such as a screw,
require more assembly time than parts requiring no orientation, such as a sphere
• Part requires only one hand for assembly: Parts requiring one hand to assemble
require less time than parts requiring two hands, which in turn require less effort than
parts requiring a crane or lift to assemble
• Part requires no tools: Assembly operations requiring tools, such as attaching snap
rings, springs, or cotter pins, generally require more time than those that do not
• Part is assembled in a single, linear motion: Numerous fasteners are commercially
available that require only a single, linear motion for insertion
• Part is secured or tightened immediately upon insertion
 IV. Reduce the Costs of Supporting Production

• Reductions in the demands placed on the production support functions

• A reduction in the number of parts reduces the demands on inventory management
• A reduction in assembly content reduces the number of workers required for production and
therefore reduces the cost of supervision and human resource management
• Standardized components reduce the demands on engineering support and quality control
• Minimize Systemic Complexity
• An extremely simple manufacturing system would utilize a single process to transform a single raw
material into a single part
• Many real manufacturing systems involve hundreds of suppliers, thousands of different parts,
hundreds of people, and dozens of types of production processes
• Error Proofing
• Anticipate the possible failure modes of the production system and to take appropriate corrective
actions early in the development process
• One type of failure mode arises from having slightly different parts that can be easily confused
(screws differing only slightly in the pitch of the threads)
• It is recommended either that these subtle differences be eliminated or that slight differences be
exaggerated
 V. Impact of DFM Decisions on Other Factors

• The Impact of DFM on Development Cost and Time

• For an automobile development project, time may be worth as much as several hundred
thousand dollars per day
• For this reason, DFM decisions must be evaluated for their impact on development time as well
as for their impact on manufacturing cost
• The Impact of DFM on Product Quality
• Manufacturing cost reduction does not necessarily also result in improved serviceability,
reliability, robustness, ease of disassembly, and recycling
• It is advisable for the team to keep in mind the many dimensions of quality that are important
for the product
• The Impact of DFM on External Factors
• Component reuse
• In general, resale value is not explicitly accounted for in manufacturing cost estimates
• Life cycle costs
• Throughout their life cycles, certain products may incur some company or societal costs
that are not (or are rarely) accounted for in the manufacturing cost
DMFA Guidelines
DMFA Guidelines
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DMFA Guidelines
DMFA Guidelines
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DMFA Guidelines