Meeting and Exceeding Manufacturing Expectations with Quality Control

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is designing products for easy manufacturing and creating a better, more cost-effective product. Making a product that works well and lasts a long time takes a lot of work. One important step is ensuring the design is as simple and efficient as possible. This helps the product work well during production and when people use it. DFM aims to reduce manufacturing costs and avoid costly disruptions without sacrificing quality or performance.

DFM is part of a way of making things that tries to do it right the first time. This helps to use fewer materials and not repeat steps, saving time and money. Adopting the DFM approach can help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) save money and time. It improves how things are done and speeds up the process of getting products to market. This is especially helpful for contract manufacturers.

At RiverSide Integrated Solutions (RIS), we help our customers maximize the manufacturability of their designs. Our dedicated quality improvement team aims to improve our manufacturing processes and the products we make.

It’s essential to think about a few things when making a product. Choosing suitable materials, being aware of the room for error and carefully selecting specific measurements are all important factors. These things can affect how easy or hard it is to make the product. OEMs’ choices of material, color, size and tolerance help create reliable parts that can be produced in large quantities. It also helps to minimize scrap rates and losses.

OEMs need to ensure the part is as easy to manufacture as possible. This will result in more efficient production, better quality, and lower cycle times. Below are several ways OEMs gain value from the DFM process.

Sometimes OEMs try to release new products quickly. This can lead to them cutting corners in the design process, which is never a good idea.

It is also essential to note that changes in design become exponentially more expensive throughout the product’s life cycle.

When planning a project, it’s crucial to have a detailed process in place. Executing the strategy carefully can catch any problems before they cause significant delays or cost money. The adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” accurately shows DFM. 

In addition, the DFM process will likely improve specialized tooling designs such as jigs, fixtures and dies. Without consideration during product development, the tooling may be unnecessarily complex or inefficient, leading to production challenges.

The DFM process ensures that parts can be manufactured.

This may seem obvious, but many products reach production before anyone realizes the current design is ineffective. What a nightmare.

To avoid this situation, OEMs must value and emphasize the DFM process. They must also be willing to take the time to make the necessary revisions to improve the part design. And they need to do this before initiating production.

When making things, it’s not just about making them fast. It’s important to consider how they all fit together so that everything works well and doesn’t waste resources.

If you’re making a product, it’s essential to think about the production of an assembly. You can either do this yourself or hire a contract manufacturer to do it for you. Either way, you need to consider how the product’s design will affect the process of putting it together.

This is especially important if you’re working with a contract manufacturer like RIS, which specializes in this work.

Companies should map out the physical flow of materials through each stage of assembly to identify areas for improvement. In many cases, less is more.

For instance, a best practice is to minimize the total parts and tools utilized in an assembly. It’s also best practice to reduce the complexity of their placement.

If performed properly, designing and optimizing for assembly will reduce manufacturing costs and avoid costly disruptions without sacrificing quality or performance.

Specific design features such as tight tolerances and engraving significantly impact the part cost. This drive-up cost and directionally reduce production efficiency.

As part of the DFM process, OEMs should look at design alternatives. They should ensure that any complex or intricate features are “must-haves.”

DFM will also look for opportunities to reduce raw materials. It might work best to replace solid part sections with more hollow sections. And if engineers can make the change without sacrificing quality or integrity, they should.

These design adjustments may seem like a slight reduction in material. Still, when multiplied over many production runs, the result can be significantly decreased manufacturing costs.