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Today most of the world's leading tech product manufacturing companies have several goals regarding every product. One of those goals is DFMA, which brings several benefits for the manufacturer but is easier said than done. If you are also placing your steps in this industry and going to manufacture a process, then you need to emphasize the importance of DFMA.
There are several reasons why DFMA is so important in the product development process. So, let us explore the term DFMA, its importance, and how you can make it a part of your product development process.
DFMA stands for Design For Manufacturing and Assembly. It is a methodology that is a combination of 2 different methodologies, which are:
DFM means the design for ease of manufacturing the parts that form the desired product. DFA, on the other hand, means the design for a product that will make the assembly process easier. So, when we discuss DFMA, it means the design that will work on the manufacturing aspects of a product, the assembly aspects, and their overall ease. Now that you know DFMA's meaning, we will explore how it is extremely important for your product development process.
You cannot just think of an idea and start making the product. The product needs proper research and planning, and DFMA is an important phase in that planning. Below are some factors that explain the importance of DFMA in product development.
Cost is one of the biggest manufacturing concerns for businesses. DFMA helps in strategically reducing the overall production cost throughout the development process. Here you select the right materials and also choose the right manufacturing process according to your production requirements.
In this way, the cost of that project reduces from parts to production. As a result, the overall cost of the product development process reduces.
Geometric optimization of product design is extremely important today. Whether we take the example of smartphones, laptops, or other gadgets, or consider cars and consumer electronics, the computer part is becoming smaller and more powerful simultaneously. It is all because of the geometric optimization of the circuitry.
When DFMA is implemented, the design gets a lot of suggestions and improvements throughout this process.
Most of the time, designers use the same materials because they have always been using that material. It makes their job easier, but the product's overall efficacy according to several requirements is significantly reduced.
Implementing DFMA opens opportunities for better research, and when designers change material with proper research, they can yield significant benefits with no changes to the functionality.
Good DFMA implementation positively impacts the quality concerns of product development. The overall assembly process and infrastructure are optimized for the best results. Thus, optimizing the assembly process improves the overall quality with fewer needs for reworking and rejection at the assembly line.
Today newer products come out every other day. So, a very long time to develop one product may make the technology outdated when it hits the market. DFMA solves this issue because you can see time specifications according to your requirements at every stage of the production process. It is how DFMA significantly helps in reducing the production time.
DFMA implementation helps in reusing parts because, in an assembly line, those parts are prioritized that can be shared between different product lines. Thus, it becomes easier to meet the market standards, and optimizing the assembly line infrastructure gets easier.
Standardization is one of the most important aspects of DFMA because it helps in cost cutting in several stages. Here it reduces the inventory requirements because the standard hardware parts and components become part of the production process across different products. Doing so significantly helps in reducing the inventory needs.
Another important factor in implementing DFMA is modularity, which focuses on making the design modular. It is something that we have been seeing all across the tech world. Take an example of any modern-day smartphone or a laptop. The internals is modular, where most parts are the same as the older versions. It may need to work a little on performance monitoring, but the overall benefits are huge. Different tech product manufacturers take the older devices for a trade-in.
The parts securing methods in older days were much different than today. In the older days, permanent solutions were used for securing parts inside the devices, which had many disadvantages. However, today design simplicity has been prioritized with the help of implementing DFMA. Most of the components are standard instead of using custom-made components.
Similarly, many better-securing methods are used today, including snap fits and screwing things instead of soldering and gluing. It not only helps to cut costs, but the production time is also significantly reduced.
With proper planning and research, the prototypes are made priorly. It helps in real-time testing. There could be issues with the alignment of parts or any other technical issues. With proper planning through DFMA, those prototypes help test things in real-time, and you can tweak designs that were needed during the product development process. It helps in the following ways.
The 3D-printed fixtures also do an amazing job of reducing the setup time. Several operations are required for different parts and each assembly line step. With these prototypes and fixtured, the assembling time is reduced because you can plan how to reduce the number of steps and rotations for assembling each part.
DFMA also allows you to see where you can make improvements when optimizing the production line for assembly. The workers can physically work on alignment and inspection for the production and assembly processes. So, DFMA can help plan for improvement and reduce the total number of operations for the whole workflow.
These were the top 11 factors that explain the importance of DFMA in the product development process.
Knowing the importance of DFMA all alone may not be good enough for you if you are planning on product development. So, here we will explore the right way to implement DFMA in your development process. It is a simple 4 step process where you work on everything about the product development from its beginning to its end. Below are the details about all of those steps:
The first step of implementing DFMA is communication. Communicating the product design is important. When you communicate and discuss the design, there will be several suggestions that can help in improving the design. The reason for communication is because when you communicate with the right people, they give suggestions according to their personal experiences.
Take all those suggestions and see where there is room for improvement in your design. Implementing all the findings efficiently will help make the product development process efficient.
h3 style="font-size:18px; margin: 10px 0;"> Selecting the manufacturing process considering all the important things
In the product development field, there are several manufacturing processes. Each one comes with specifications like cost, time, complexity, etc. So, you must select a manufacturing process that will be the most efficient for your product.
You can start with your specific requirements and take the advantages and disadvantages of each of the processes. Compare things and see which one of the processes is simpler with less cost and higher efficiency.
The next step is about selecting the materials. Remember that choosing the materials correctly can affect the following things:
Here you need to work on the properties that a specific part needs. Thus, material selection will become easier for you.
The final and most important step is optimizing the infrastructure that you have. See how the production is set up and if it supports the part/product you are working on. Then optimize things according to how you need them to be. It will enhance the production workflow for your product.
This way, you can implement DFMA for your product right from when you start the design to when the manufacturing process is going on.
Now that you know how important DFMA is for your product development process and how you can implement it, the whole thing will be simple and easy for you. So, if you are also planning on developing and manufacturing a product, it will be extremely important for you to incorporate DFMA in the development process. While it is extremely important and there are several benefits of DFMA, remember that there are some complexities of DFMA as well that you may need to deal with.