Power of DFMA® to Reduce
Manufacturing Operational Costs Revealed in New Survey
Leading manufacturers cite early design
decisions as critical to profitability
Click here to download the full survey roundtable report »
Sixty-eight percent of a survey group, including Fortune 400 companies, measured an increase in production throughput, and 47 percent an increase in profit per unit of factory floor space, after applying Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA®) techniques to their organizations’ supply chains. A roundtable discussion of these and other results from the questionnaire, conducted by Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc., is now available.
Respondents included Dell, Motorola, TRW Automotive, Raytheon, MDS Analytical Technologies, Magna Intier Automotive Seating and other leading North American manufacturers. Some participants also contributed to a candid roundtable discussion about applying design simplification and early costing to Lean and Six Sigma programs, along with the opportunities missed by industry in measuring financial best practices.
“We achieved a 300 percent increase in profit per square foot of factory floor space by taking a lot of cost and labor out of product using DFMA tools,” said Mike Shipulski, director of engineering, Hypertherm, Inc., a leader in plasma cutting technology. “Like many others who participated in this survey, we’ve barely begun documenting some of the savings we know we’re achieving. Everyone in industry recognizes the limitations of using traditional cost accounting methods to identify overhead savings outside the areas of directly applied labor and materials."
Boothroyd Dewhurst President John Gilligan pointed out that there has been a great deal of investment in manufacturing approaches, from Lean to PLM, intended to cut costs. “It’s critical that people understand how early design decisions profoundly affect the savings achieved by these other efforts,” he said. “This survey clearly demonstrates that it’s time to open a deeper dialogue about the relationship between design efficiency and total manufacturing returns.”
George
Valaitis, MDS Analytical Technologies
Mike
Shipulski, Hypertherm
Gordon
Lewis, DaTuM3D
Paul Zimmermann, Raytheon