DFMA stands for Design for Manufacture and Assembly. DFMA is the combination of two methodologies;
Design for Manufacture
Design for manufacturability (also sometimes known as design for manufacturing or DFM) is the general engineering practice of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture. The concept exists in almost all engineering discipl ...
, which means the design for ease of manufacture of the parts that will form a product, and
Design for Assembly Design for assembly (DFA) is a process by which products are designed with ease of assembly in mind. If a product contains fewer parts it will take less time to assemble, thereby reducing assembly costs. In addition, if the parts are provided wi ...
, which means the design of the product for ease of assembly deriving creative ideas at the same time.
Usage
DFMA is used as the basis for
concurrent engineering
Concurrent engineering (CE) or concurrent design and manufacturing is a work methodology emphasizing the parallelization of tasks (i.e. performing tasks concurrently), which is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or integrated product develo ...
studies to provide guidance to the design team in simplifying the product structure, to reduce manufacturing and assembly costs, and to quantify improvements. The practice of applying DFMA is to identify, quantify and eliminate waste or inefficiency in a product design. DFMA is therefore a component of
Lean Manufacturing
DFMA is also used as a benchmarking tool to study competitors’ products, and as a should cost tool to assist in supplier negotiations.
[ Boothroyd, G., Dewhurst, P. and Knight, W., “Product Design for Manufacture and Assembly, 2nd Edition”, Marcel Dekker, New York, 2002.]
Software
DFMA is the name of the integrated set of software products from Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc. that are used by companies to implement the DFMA methodology. DFMA is a registered trademark of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.
Notes
References
“DFMA Takes a Back-to-Basics Product Simplification Strategy to Cut Costs” September 2010 article from Design News magazine“DFMA Hits the Jackpot” July 2010 article from Desktop Engineering magazineOfficial European DFMA SiteDFMA Official Site
Product development
Design
{{design-stub