Article

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What are the benefits of design for manufacturingand assembly (DFMA)?
• What are the founding principles of DFMA?
• Design for assembly (DFA)
• Design for manufacturing (DFM)
• Other design methods related to DFMA
• Design for Testing/Testability (DFT)
• Design for Procurement (DFP)
• Six Sigma
• Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

While your team may already have a brilliant concept or even prototype, mass production requires an entirely differ-ent way of thinking. The manufacturing process can be complex and expensive—and even the smallest incorrect deci-sion can have disastrous impacts on your product success. After all, product engineering experts estimate that design and development choices influence 70% of overall costs. Partnering with an electronics contract manufacturer that uses the right manufacturing methodology can yield valuable time and cost savings.

Design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) is one of the leading approaches used by top electronics engineers. DFMA examines the entire development and manufac-turing process to find the most efficient, optimized, and economical strategies. Experts infuse tenets of DFMA into the design process at its earliest stages. Instead of building a product exclusively from a usability standpoint, engi-neers also use assembly and manufacturability as a key principle guiding their design decisions. By adding these important factors to their thought processes, businesses can reap the following benefits:

• Accelerated time-to-market
• Lowered production costs
• Decreased cost of product ownership
• Shortened development process
• Identifies potential errors in advance
• Bolsters product quality reliability

From how intuitively parts fit together during assembly to selecting an optimal method of production, DFMA spe-cialists thoroughly analyze every detail through the lens of assembly and manufacturing ease. Practitioners of this premier design philosophy exhaustively consider factors across the entire product life cycle such as:

• Total number of parts in the final product
• Overall tooling needs
• Interchangeability of components
• Number of manufacturing steps
• Techniques used to fasten parts together
• Level of experience required for manual assembly projects
• How fool proof assembly instructions are
• If a certain finishing or material is easy for machinesor human assembly teams to grasp or hold

While your internal team of engineers are experts in your core business technology, seasoned DFMA specialists bring an entirely different perspective of engineering knowledge to the table. By bringing together several disciplines like quality control, production operations, and manufacturing engineering, enlisting the help of an electronics manufac-turing service with a DFMA mindset helps your team design for efficiency.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING AND ASSEMBLY (DFMA)?

DFMA views a product holistically. Instead of viewing the final product as a single entity, manufacturing experts use the tenets of DFMA to assess how a single product fits into the entire manufacturing ecosystem. What are the main advantages of this philosophy, and how do they expedite time-to-market and shore up product reliability while reducing overall costs?

• Reduces overall cost of ownership: Manufacturing missteps like missing components can lead to skyrocketing costs. Sending a project back to the drawing board can chip away at your bottom line. With a very keen eye, DFMA experts comb through your bill of materials to make sure each and every part is present. When products contain hundreds or thousands of parts, you can leave nothing to chance.
• Decreases assembly complexity: DFMA leaders want to find the easiest, most intuitive way to assemble a product. Can you standardize parts across an entire product line? Can products manufactured within one plant use identical parts? With fewer part numbers, you can reduce assembly costs and make for more manageable inventory.
• Increases reliability: By using the fewest parts possible, there are fewer opportunities for product failures.
• Minimize variations of similar components: Maybe instead of tooling two different sizes of resistors, you can use the same size yet adjust the tolerances. DFMA specialists evaluate each and every component to come up with a highly streamlined bill of materials.
• Easier fabrication: Consider the size, shape, and finish of all necessary parts. Complicated edges and unnecessary notches can lead to skyrocketing fabrication costs. Small adjustments can dramatically reduce production costs.
• Integrates commercially available components when available: Does a part require new tooling, or can you take advantage of readily available pieces?
• Foolproofs the assembly process: Assembly instructions must be easily repeatable. In order to avoid errors, parts should intuitively fit together with self-locating or self-fastening features. By adding chamfered angles or keying and locking features, you can ensure assemblers will always get it right the first time.
• Minimizes risk of costly reworks: Through this meticulous lens, electronics contract manufacturers can improve product throughput and passing ratio. When your project is monitored by a highly detailed team, you’re less likely to incur reject costs.
• Considers cost-effective measures that influence the complete product life cycle: Once the product is on the market, how challenging will it be for a service team to disassemble for repairs? Using DFMA, you can find opportu-nities to reduce parts variation to save costs throughout the entire product life cycle.

Electronics manufacturing services specializing in DFMA leverage leading software tech to help make these mis-sion-critical decisions. Advanced tests like thermal analysis help predict a material’s behavior as it changes tempera-tures throughout the manufacturing process. Mold flow analysis allows experts to observe a virtual injection molding process to simulate how enhancements to the mold can improve product quality and durability. By using DFMA as your guiding design principle, you can shore up your assembly and manufacturing processes with the most cost-effective, highly efficient methods available.

WHAT ARE THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF DFMA?

Before evolving into a single collaborative discipline, DFMA began as two dis-tinct methodologies: design for assembly and design for manufacturing. Let’s review the foundations of each practice to demonstrate how they converge into the comprehensive DFMA philosophy.

DESIGN FOR ASSEMBLY (DFA)

Design for assembly focuses specifically on a cost-effec-tive assembly process: the number of parts involved and how easy they are to handle during each stage. The goal is to eliminate unnecessary complexities and create an easy, streamlined assembly process. Key factors of DFA include:

• Simplify assembly stages: Products should require the minimum number of parts possible. DFA special-ists perform a deep dive into a product’s function and study how parts move and work together in order to eliminate those that are redundant or unnecessary.
• Remove unnecessary parts: DFM provides a frame-work for determining whether a part is necessary. It guides engineers towards questions like: Does the way this part moves impact the overall function? and Does this part need to be a separate component? Here’s where specialists can make the important decision to eliminate parts, or combine multiple parts into a single form factor.
• Design a consistent assembly experience: Avoid situations where assemblers would select the wrong part, omit a part, or insert it crooked or upside down.
• Avoid overly detailed steps: Parts should self-align with one another and fit together like a puzzle with-out requiring highly precise manual adjustments. For example, under the DFA methodology, designers may select rivets over screws and avoid excessive washers.
• Ease of handling: Sticky, sharp, or slippery parts are challenging for assemblers to maneuver.
• Ease of retrieval: Parts that are extremely small, or have angles that easily tangle together are time con-suming for assembly teams to organize. Plus, it should be easy for assembly teams to tell the difference be-tween parts: even a fleeting moment of confusion can delay turnaround times.

With a DFA mindset, manufacturing engineers consider the detailed features of every part like size, thickness, weight, fragility, and handfeel. Parts are studied not for their sheer novelty, but for how practically they are to maneuver within a given assembly setting. DFA special-ists are committed to designing processes that eliminate assembly guesswork, and help businesses achieve a con-sistent, repeatable product quality.

DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING (DFM)

Design for manufacturing (sometimes called design for manufacturability) focuses on finding the most cost-ef-fective materials and manufacturing techniques. DFM leaders understand industry-leading technologies and strive to design parts and components in such a way that reduces overall production costs. Leading principles of DFM include:

• Modularity: Can you easily swap in other parts, or is a part too complex or exacting?
• Minimize reorientation steps: During manufacturing, you want to limit the number of times a part requires repositioning.
• Reduce the number of manufacturing steps: Accel-erate time-to-market by making the process as short as possible.
• Find the best technology: Is hard tooling required? Are there readily available components that you can use instead? Specialists in this field search out the best manufacturing method for your specific project while maximizing potential throughput.
• Select materials best suited for the manufacturing process of choice: Casting, machining, or forming each have their own pros and cons when it comes to material selection. Using DFM, designers ensure there is an ideal pairing between your final materials and manufacturing methods.
• Review tolerances: Are the specified tolerances reliably attainable through the selected manufacturing method? By using a DFM mindset, engineers can make tolerance choices that are appropriate for a given pro-duction method, or vice versa.
• Examine cost dependability of chosen materials: An important part of DFM is ensuring you can continue to produce products on budget for the long haul. If a material is known for its cost volatility, DFM special-ists can investigate alternatives.
• Design for a particular manufacturing process: DFM experts may add insertions or flanges to a part so it can fit into an automated process.

Using DFM methodologies, engineers consider factors like how many times manufacturers must perform tool changes during the production process. Nuances such as standardizing a part’s radii, revising tolerances, or repositioning tapped holes can dramatically improve the manufacturing time frame. By infusing manufacturability into the earliest stages of the design process, you’ll position your product for maximum success through every stage of its life cycle.

DFMA brings together these two practices to shorten the product development cycle and help your business to realize higher profits at a faster rate. With a holistic understanding of the full picture, specialists understand how a small change to a product’s design can impact a manufacturing step later down the line. By harmonizing this cross-functional range of knowledge into one discipline, you’ll have a crystal clear understanding into how design and development choices are interconnected.

OTHER DESIGN METHODS RELATED TO DFMA

While DFMA is one of the foremost design methods for reducing complexity and costs, there is a robust repertoire of other manufacturing mindsets adopted by thought leaders. This family of design philosophies is known as Design for X (DFX), where X represents a goal or target to serve as the foundation for a project’s decision making process. Depending on a project’s distinct needs, engineers may adopt a different or hybrid approach.

• Design for Testing/Testability (DFT): Engineers involved in the manufacturing of electronics like printed circuit boards often turn to the DFT method. This thought process adds elements like test points or extra gates to a design for the sole purpose of performing impedance and continuity check-ups throughout the manufacturing process.

• Design for Procurement (DFP): This philosophy hones in on the long-term sustainability of a given design. Will it be easy to source a selected material months or years down the line? Are components or raw materials nearing their end of life? When considering a product design through a DFP lens, experts consider supply longevity and recom-mend design changes based on their analysis.

• Six Sigma: To find flaws in their organizational or production processes, many professionals turn to methods like Six Sigma. Businesses deploy this data-driven approach to find ways to streamline. With the objective of delivering a “perfect” final product, you can identify wasteful tasks, find momentum bottlenecks, and eliminate superfluous steps that do not contribute to customer value.

The best EMS partners combine creativity with the use of a structured design philosophy. Every project comes with its own nuances, and experienced engineers and designers know precisely which system to select from when it comes to your unique product needs.

CONCLUSION

When your electronics product contains hundreds—or even thousands—of parts, it can be extremely challenging for your in-house team to keep a watchful eye on the ins-and-outs of each and every single one. After all, as an OEM, you need to focus your resources on research and development of the core technology that powers your business. Howev-er, it is within these detailed manufacturing and assembly decisions where you can incur nearly three-fourths of your overall costs. Ignoring these factors or rushing to market with an incomplete production plan can spell disaster for your organization’s ambitious goals.

Empower your internal staff with a slate of DFMA engineers ready to plan each detail of mass production. With the right team in place, you can commercialize a high quality, low-cost-of-ownership product in record time. By partnering with an experienced and thriving EMS, your team can remain laser-focused on next-gen innovations, while leaving the manufacturing legwork to a full-fledged team of DFMA experts.