Manufacturing Engineering: How widespread are design for manufacture (DFM) practices today among manufacturers? Don't all manufacturers use some form of DFM? Nick Dewhurst: Yes, I suppose all manufacturers think that they use some form of design for manufacture today, in that they have it written into their product development processes as a guideline, or as a check-off box of rules in a spreadsheet. But as a formalized, quantitative aspect of a company's standard product development and manufacturing process, DFM is probably done quite rarely. The focus, instead, seems to be on a kind of late-stage part producibility exercise that tackles general ease-of-manufacture issues, coupled with line-efficiency improvements.
展开▼
