9 Actions to Transition from Firefighting to Improving

The customer is missing a part – did production forget to pack it or did my junior engineer forget to include it in the packing list? This part doesn’t fit, production is at a standstill – did our subcontractor screw up or did I put the wrong tolerance on the drawing? A customer called and […]

What is Product Design For Manufacturing?

Designing products with a view to their ease of manufacture and assembly, it really is that straight forward! Why? Reduce production cost, improve quality and reduce lead time. There are many more indirect benefits but basically it is the big three, the reason behind any improvement – cost, quality and time. Why improve with DFM, […]

Product Design Improvement on a Fishing Trip

Industry accepted statistics indicate that investment in designing a product typically computes to around 5% of the overall cost of each product sold. The irony here is that this product design process influences around 70% of the overall product cost to manufacture. That includes factors such as material selection, number of parts, choice of assembly processes, etcetera. […]

1 Key Critical to Design For Manufacturing Results

I recently produced a series of posts that have looked at creating good foundations for implementation of design for manufacturing. These have included transitioning from the firefight to improvement (Read Here) and working towards establishing a lean engineering department (Read Here). They have also looked at the big picture (Read Here), how the approach you […]

We Need To DFM Systems Not Just Processes

Design for manufacturing (DFM) is, obviously enough, about designing your products with a view to the manufacturing processes that are going to be used. It stands to reason then that it would benefit the design if the design engineer understood those manufacturing processes. For most engineers who would be considered casual adopters of Design For […]

4 Most Common Questions About Lean Engineering Answered

What is Lean engineering? Well it is nothing to do with leaning towers. Most of us will have heard of lean in relation to manufacturing where it is defined as a ‘systematic method for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing system’. Now simply replace the word manufacturing in that definition with engineering or product […]