Reducing the lead time required to create and construct a product is crucial in today's fast-paced and competitive market. Time-to-market significantly impacts a company's success. Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) is a powerful cost-cutting approach that optimizes the product development process. DFMA involves breaking down the product into its fundamental components and analyzing their manufacturing and assembly requirements. By examining the product's design early on, the design team gains insights into assembly sequence, material flow, and production challenges. This knowledge identifies opportunities for simplification, standardization, and automation, leading to lower production costs (Boothroyd, 1994). DFMA promotes the adoption of Design for X (DFX) principles, such as Design for Assembly (DFA) and Design for Manufacturing (DFM). DFA focuses on designing products that are easy to assemble, with reduced part counts, simplified connections, and efficient fastening mechanisms. DFM emphasizes designing products optimized for manufacturing processes, considering material selection, fabrication techniques, and tooling requirements(Suresh et al., 2015; Tucci et al., 2014) (Boothroyd, 1994).
Integrating DFMA practices into the conceptualization phase allows companies to proactively address design flaws, production bottlenecks, and cost-intensive processes. Although implementing DFMA techniques initially requires additional time and resources, the benefits outweigh the investment. Optimizing the design streamlines subsequent phases, saving significant time, cost, and effort in the long run. Moreover, the conceptualization phase incurs a substantial portion, ranging from 60–80%, of the total product cost (Nasyitah, 2020)(Harlalka et al., 2016). However, companies often allocate only around 5% of their budget to this critical stage. Allocating sufficient resources and expertise to the conceptualization phase maximizes cost reduction, performance improvement, and project success potential.
DFMA is a valuable and proven methodology that reduces lead time, enhances product quality, and optimizes production costs (Boothroyd et al., 2010). Leveraging DFMA techniques provides a comprehensive understanding of the product's design intricacies, assembly requirements, and manufacturing processes early in the development cycle. This knowledge empowers design teams and engineers to make informed decisions about architecture, material selection, component integration, and manufacturing feasibility. By grasping the assembly sequence and material flow, companies streamline operations, eliminate redundancies, and minimize production complexities. This results in easier production, higher reliability, and overall cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, DFMA encourages the integration of various design principles, such as DFA and DFM, to enhance the product development process.
Investing in the conceptualization phase is significant, as it incurs a substantial portion of the total cost (Boothroyd et al., 2010)(Das et al., 2000; Zhang & Sarin, 2022). Allocating adequate resources and expertise to the early stages of product development helps identify potential design flaws, production bottlenecks, and cost-intensive processes. This proactive approach mitigates risks, reduces iterations, and enhances project outcomes. Embracing DFMA as a fundamental part of the product development strategy allows organizations to realize its full potential. Through analysis, optimization, and alignment with industry best practices, DFMA empowers companies to achieve efficient and cost-effective production processes.
A study reveals the effective utilization of DFMA in the white goods sector, encompassing household appliances like refrigerators, ovens, and toasters. Redesigning a consumer product with cost reduction and enhanced reliability as objectives demonstrates the potential of DFMA in this industry (Canciglieri et al., 2010). DFMA includes functional analysis, dissecting the product into its functions and evaluating the approach to accomplish each function. This process identifies opportunities for streamlining and integrating components and operations. Implementing DFMA optimizes the design, leading to significant cost reductions and improved quality (Selvaraj et al., 2009).
In summary, the DFMA approach effectively reduces costs, improves product reliability, and ensures timely delivery. By simplifying product design and assembly processes, companies create products that are easy to manufacture and assemble, resulting in cost savings and increased customer satisfaction. DFMA comprises Design for Manufacture (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA). DFM focuses on designing products for cost-effective manufacturing, analyzing the manufacturing process, and optimizing the design to reduce production costs. DFA focuses on designing products for efficient assembly, analyzing the assembly process, and optimizing the design to reduce assembly time and costs (Formentini et al., 2022).
In conclusion, the DFMA methodology, encompassing DFM and DFA, offers significant benefits in terms of cost reduction, enhanced product quality, and shortened lead time. Applying DFMA principles during the conceptualization phase enables the identification and resolution of potential design flaws, production bottlenecks, and cost-intensive processes. DFMA integrates manufacturing and assembly considerations into product design, optimizing the overall production process for cost-effective manufacturing and assembly. The white goods sector and other industries have recognized the value of DFMA in achieving cost savings and reliability improvements. Through functional analysis and DFMA practices, companies streamline product designs, simplify manufacturing processes, and optimize assembly operations, leading to enhanced efficiency, quality, and market competitiveness (Formentini et al., 2022).
To enhance the assembly process (Fig. 1) (Boothroyd, 1994) (Formentini et al., 2022), multiple measures must be implemented. The initial stage entails delineating the assembly procedure, encompassing the determination of requisite tools and equipment, the sequence of piece construction, and the steps involved in product assembly. The subsequent phase involves identifying improvement prospects through an analysis of the assembly process to pinpoint bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and potential opportunities for simplification (Erdmann et al., 2023)(Raucent et al., 1998; Schmidt, 1998). The DFA technique streamline the assembly procedure, minimise the quantity of components, and enhance the precision and quality of the components. The assessment of the feasibility of design changes involves evaluating their impact on the manufacturing process, cost, quality, and overall product performance. Upon completion of the feasibility analysis of the design modifications, it is imperative to develop and assess a prototype of the product to detect any potential issues or challenges. After resolution of all identified concerns, the design modifications can be executed, which may necessitate revising the production procedures, providing additional training to the assembly staff, or updating any pertinent records (Boorsma et al., 2021; Lindkvist Haziri & Sundin, 2020). The process of optimising assembly involves consistent monitoring and evaluation to detect potential areas for enhancement and implement any required modifications.
1.1 Design for assembly (DFA)
By identifying and minimising the amount of pieces required to build a product, DFA seeks to streamline the assembly process. Making a distinction between obligatory and optional components is required to achieve this. The product's essential components are those that are necessary for it to operate properly. These components are essential to the operation and functioning of the product and cannot be removed. To ensure that the product will serve its intended function, it is crucial to identify vital components. On the other side, non-essential components are those that are included for other factors, such as convenience or aesthetics, but are not necessary to the operation of the product. These components can be removed or swapped out for a less complex option without impairing the operation of the final product.
The DFA process often comprises a methodical examination of the product's design and assembly process. This analysis is used to decide which components of the product are vital and which are non-essential (Fig. 2). The purpose of this analysis is to determine which components of the product are necessary for it to perform its functions and which ones may be removed or substituted. This study is comprised of a number of phases, such as reviewing the product's assembly sequence, detecting potential assembly concerns, and determining how easy the product is to put together.
Once the essential and non-essential parts have been identified, the focus is on simplifying the product's design and assembly process. The goal is to eliminate non-essential parts and simplify the assembly of essential parts. This simplification reduces the number of parts needed to assemble the product, which, in turn, reduces assembly time and cost, and improves product reliability.
Overall, identifying essential and non-essential parts is an essential step in the DFA process. It helps to ensure that the product will function correctly while simplifying the assembly process and reducing the overall cost of production.