Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc., will host the twenty-eighth annual International Forum on Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA®) on June 12-14, 2013. This year’s Forum, “Engineering Value with DFMA—Unlocking Profits in Product Design,” will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Providence-Warwick, R.I., USA.
“Value analysis is a way for every organization—be it engineering-driven, financial or social in nature—to determine if the products and services it offers align with what customers truly want and are willing to pay for,” said John Gilligan, president of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.
“We have decided this year to re-emphasize the deep relationship that DFMA shares with Value Engineering,” said Gilligan. “As the U.S. and other leading manufacturing countries compete internationally on price and performance, DFMA offers producers a powerful business approach for realizing end-to-end efficiency—one that impacts product labor content, materials, quality, manufacturing, inventory, and supply-chain delivery—leading to higher customer satisfaction and profits.”
“Cost reduction by Western industries has largely been achieved by putting pressure on direct labor rates and supplier margins,” said Nick Dewhurst, vice president of Boothroyd Dewhurst. “With those two tactical approaches now virtually exhausted, attention ought to shift to understanding just how these same cost factors are embedded within the structure of the product. The best way to remove labor, supplier and lifecycle overhead is to simplify the product design into elegant, multifunction single parts and lean assemblies. The next frontier for the business side of manufacturing is in learning to unlock profits from the product design. The DFMA Forum offers testimonials and advice from manufacturing leaders who are on this path.”
Speakers for the 2013 DFMA International Forum include AB SCIEX, Motorola Solutions, ITT Aerospace Controls, Westinghouse, Dynisco Instruments (Roper Industries) and Whirlpool Corp.
About the DFMA Forum
The Forum is the foremost conference worldwide on DFMA methodologies and software. DFMA helps structure a team’s knowledge and guide collaboration efforts from the concept stage onward to create feature-rich products at less cost. It does this by providing comparative “should cost” estimates for manufacturing processes and materials, and by targeting opportunities for product simplification.
The Forum offers insights and solutions to managers, financial decision-makers, design engineers, manufacturing engineers, purchasing personnel, and supply-chain experts interested in benefitting from up-front product development. In addition to the presentations listed below, there will be a pre-conference workshop on “Value Engineering and DFMA” by productivity and lean six sigma expert Chris Tsai of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.