How can you improve manufacturability with your team?

1 Involve manufacturing early

One of the most common mistakes in product engineering is to design a product without considering how it will be manufactured. This can lead to costly redesigns, delays, and quality issues later on. To avoid this, you should involve your manufacturing team or partner as early as possible in the product development process. They can provide valuable feedback on the feasibility, cost, and quality of your design, and suggest improvements or alternatives. They can also help you identify and mitigate potential risks, such as supply chain disruptions, regulatory compliance, or safety hazards.

2 Apply design for manufacturing principles

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is a set of principles and guidelines that aim to simplify and optimize product design for manufacturing. DFM can help reduce the number of parts, materials, and processes involved in your product, while also improving its reliability, performance, and functionality. Common DFM principles include minimizing complexity and variety of features and components, using standard and common parts and materials that are readily available and compatible, avoiding unnecessary or excessive tolerances, dimensions, and specifications, designing for easy assembly, disassembly, and maintenance, designing for robustness and durability, and designing for recyclability and sustainability.

3 Use appropriate tools and methods

In order to improve manufacturability, the right tools and methods should be used for design, testing, and validating a product. Computer-aided design (CAD) software can create, modify, and analyze the product design in a digital environment. Computer-aided engineering (CAE) software can simulate and evaluate the performance, functionality, and behavior of the product under various conditions and scenarios. Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software can generate and control instructions and operations for manufacturing machines. Rapid prototyping techniques like 3D printing, laser cutting, or CNC machining can create physical models of the product quickly and cheaply. Design of experiments (DOE) techniques can optimize the product design by testing different variables and factors systematically and statistically.

5 Learn and improve continuously

Manufacturability is not a static or fixed attribute of your product. It can change and evolve over time, as new technologies, trends, and customer needs emerge. Therefore, you should always seek to learn and improve your manufacturability, and adapt to the changing market and environment. You should monitor and measure your manufacturability performance, and identify and analyze the root causes of any problems or issues. You should also implement corrective and preventive actions, and track and evaluate their effectiveness. You should also collect and review feedback and data from your customers and end-users, and use them to improve your product design and quality. You should also keep up with the latest developments and innovations in your industry and field, and seek to adopt or integrate them into your product engineering process.