Design for Manufacture and Assembly

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) technique has been utilized extensively in industry field these days. This paper is a detailed review which will discuss the development history of DFMA, compare some other “DFMA-like” theories, and good stories about the successful implementations of DFMA in real-word product design. 1. DFMA and its development history 1.1 Traditional design paradigm In order to survive and develop in the market, the enterprises have to present their new product to the public rapidly and continuously. Meanwhile, they must keep their products with the low price and high quality. So, developing the new product to satisfy the costumes requirements and make them appear in the market as soon as possible becomes the key to share more part of the cake of the market. The tradition manufacturing method follows the developing cycle shown as figure 1. Following the conceptual sketches of the parts completed on the CAD workstation, the design engineers create the detail drawing and assembly engineer create the assembly plan. The workshop makes the prototype and gives the feedback, which accords to the sample test, to the design engineers and assembly engineers who will redesign the product, the assembly and the manufacturing process. The same cycle repeats again and again until arriving at competitive design. This kind of process makes the design and manufacturing been performed independently. “In this scenario, the designer designs a product and ‘tosses it over the wall’ to the manufacturer to produce. [1]” The design engineer and the manufacturing engineer works individually and what results is that the final products have many d isadvantages such as poor characteristics in manufacturing, assembly, maintenance; long developing period; high cost; and unguaranteed