This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Assembly Magazine logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
Assembly Magazine logo
  • MAGAZINE
    • Current Issue
    • Digital Edition
    • How-To-Guide
    • Buyers Guide
    • Factory of the Future
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Plant of the Year
      • About Plant of the Year
      • Nomination Form
    • Capital Spending
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace
    • Appliance
    • Automotive
    • Medical Devices
    • DFMA Assembly
    • Green Manufacturing
    • Lean Manufacturing
    • Electronics Assembly
    • Machinery Assembly
  • TECHNOLOGIES
    • Adhesives
    • Assembly Presses
    • Automated Assembly
    • Dispensing
    • Motion Control
    • Screwdriving and Riveting
    • Plastics Assembly
    • Robotics
    • Test and Inspection
    • Welding
    • Wire Processing
    • Workstations
    • New Products
  • COLUMNS
    • Assembly in Action
    • Automation Profiles
    • On Campus
    • The Editorial
    • Moser on Manufacturing
  • MORE
    • Classifieds
    • Focus On
    • eNewsletter
    • Blog
    • Store
    • Product Spotlight
    • White Papers
    • Integrated Showcase
    • Sponsored Insight
  • MEDIA
    • Assembly TV
    • Webinars
    • Interactive Spotlights
  • EVENTS
    • Calendar
    • The Assembly Show
  • CONTACT
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Custom Content & Marketing Solutions
    • Market Research
  • AEM
    • AV/EM News
    • Autonomy
    • Connectivity
    • Electrification
    • Mobility Services
    • Assembly and Testing
  • INFOCENTER
    • Collaborative Robot Revolution
    • Factory of the Future
    • Smart Pressing Technology
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Home » Upstream Scrutiny Drives Downstream Savings

You have 0 Articles Left This Month. Register Today for Unlimited Access.

DFMA AssemblyElectronics Assembly

Upstream Scrutiny Drives Downstream Savings

November 1, 2012
Miles Parker
KEYWORDS benchmark competing products / eliminating fasteners / total cost of ownership
Order Reprints

Any chemist will tell you that pollutants that find their way into a river can be invisible by the time they’ve filtered downstream, even though they’re still causing damage. A similar tenet holds true for products: Decisions about how products are designed can dictate unnecessary costs during production and beyond, often without the manufacturer even noticing.

John Biagioni has spent his career scrutinizing what happens upstream. Biagioni is vice president of supply chain and operations at Dynisco, a maker of extrusion measurement and control equipment for the plastics industry.

Biagioni’s interest in the implications of product design dates back to his days at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he conducted a design assessment of a popular cordless drill as part of his graduate work in manufacturing engineering. His revised design eliminated fasteners, added a plain sleeve bearing, and called for a snap-together case—lowering the product’s material and manufacturing costs. The suggested changes also dramatically altered the product’s waste stream and environmental impact. The manufacturer ultimately used the design.

“People who look only to the supply chain to get cost out of a product ignore the truth that design drives cost,” Biagioni says today.

Dynisco takes that philosophy to heart. The company grades its products—which include pressure and temperature sensors, control systems, and analytical instruments—based on total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO is a holistic discipline that begins with a cost assessment of each product’s piece parts. From there, Dynisco works to ascertain the product’s total landed cost, which can include capital spent on freight, insurance, fuel charges and customs duties. But only when the picture expands to yet another level, to cover items such as the cost of poor quality, inventory carrying costs, reverse logistics, and risk factors from wage inflation to intellectual property protection, does Dynisco consider the cost picture complete.

For a company that manufactures its products in both the United States and overseas locations, such as Malaysia, such insight can be invaluable in driving operational decisions.

“The TCO model is a time-and-point snapshot that helps us decide where to build and launch a product,” Biagioni says.

Design can have a significant impact on a product’s TCO. To illustrate the connection, Biagioni relates the story of an industrial design shop that Dynisco enlisted to create specs for a small analytical instrument. Unfamiliar with the design efficiency that Dynisco practices, the outside engineers concerned themselves mostly with aesthetics—not with the manufacturing implications of their design. Their plans called for 62 parts for the single cover and housing. Dynisco is now reworking the design to cast that constellation of components into one unified part, streamlining the product’s design and minimizing the effects on downstream production and cost.

“That part is currently being sourced short-term through the design house. If I were to bring that component fully on line here, with 62 parts, think of how many suppliers I would have to potentially get,” Biagioni says. “And think of the square footage I would have to reserve, and the assembly people, stocking locations, part numbers and tolerance issues.” 

To help assess the TCO of its products, Dynisco benchmarks them against one another and against offerings from Dynisco’s competitors. Like the TCO methodology itself, the benchmarking process reaches far into the company, touching nearly every department.

The process begins with performance tests on Dynisco’s and competitors’ products. Next, a team led by Matt Miles, Dynisco’s DFMA and value engineering manager, tears down each of the competitive products, analyzing the design part by part to create a bill of materials.

When the benchmark analysis is complete, the team analyzes each product using the Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) methodology, which calculates the costs of the parts and the assembly processes Dynisco uses to turn them into products. DFMA is governed by two complementary software tools from Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc. The Design for Assembly application helps engineers assess the structural efficiency of their designs and consolidate parts to improve efficiency and cost. The Design for Manufacture tool suggests alternative material choices and process improvements to the original design.

“We wanted to analyze what types of material the competitors used, how much they used, and how much machining was involved, compared to ours, so we could capture that dollar value,” Miles explains. “We found some examples where eight pounds of raw material were used, and you’re machining away more than 75 percent of it.”

Dynisco left no stone unturned during the benchmarking exercise, even analyzing the way subassemblies were mated during production, determining how pieces were bonded and what kinds of soldering joints were used. “We looked at everything,” Miles says. “With the help of the software we could project the total assembled cost of a competitor’s unit.”

To validate the DFMA tool to their coworkers, Biagioni, Miles and the team recorded each product’s DFMA score, part count and related metrics in a spreadsheet. They then shared the data with the benchmarking team, which included vice presidents, product managers, operations personnel, supply chain practitioners and engineers. Miles says a large benchmarking team was necessary.

“The impacts of the cost of ownership are felt throughout the company,” he explains. “An engineer’s design decision will impact not only the design, but reparability out in the field, as well as the procurement of parts and cost. That’s why we brought in so many stakeholders.”

Dynisco gathered the team of 16 in a conference room for a day, scrutinizing each assembly, passing parts around, and reviewing the DFMA attributes and data. At the end of each product review, the team addressed such critical questions as “Where do we go from here, and how do we make our product better?”

The diversity of participants led to a cascade of ideas. The team considered new assembly techniques, methods of consolidating parts, and alternative materials that would streamline costs while maintaining quality and function.

“Getting people from the different departments all together in one room, you really open up communication,” Miles says. “The energy we created in that environment, it’s powerful. You come out of there and you have everybody in the room charged up about redesigning the product.”

You have 0 complimentary articles left.

Register for free today to continue reading!

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Privacy Policy

Related Articles

Foxconn’s Czech Assembly Plant Faces Scrutiny

Upstream Assembly

Functional Testing Moves Upstream

AIA: Material Savings With Cold Forming

Subscribe For Free!
  • Digital Edition Subscription
  • Assembly eNewsletters
  • Online Registration
  • Subscription Customer Service
  • Mobile App

More Videos

Popular Stories

ford louisville

Parts Shortage Stops Work at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant

Volcon 1-6

Off-Road EV Maker Volcon Plans New Facility in Central Texas

GM 12-23

General Motors' Factory ZERO Deploys 5G Technology

Upcoming Assembly Events and Webinars

Events

September 17, 2020

Automated Screwdriving with Collaborative Robots

As more companies automate their screwdriving processes with collaborative robots, there are many factors to consider to ensure employee safety, consistent required torque high degree of repeatability and zero defect products. Join Universal Robots and screwdriving experts Atlas Copco for this joint webinar featuring the latest developments in automated screwdriving.

March 11, 2021

Automation 201 – Clarifying Your Requirements for Project Success

In our popular "Automation 101" webinar, Epson helped guide automation professionals with a simple step-by-step framework for getting started with robotics. Automation 201 picks up where 101 left off by taking a deeper dive into the critical topic of understanding your project requirements and their associated performance trade-offs. 

View All Submit An Event

Poll

Biden Administration

What should be Biden administration’s top priority for U.S. manufacturers?
View Results Poll Archive

Products

Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment (MCPD) Profitability Scenarios: Systematic and Systemic Improvement of Manufacturing Costs

Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment (MCPD) Profitability Scenarios: Systematic and Systemic Improvement of Manufacturing Costs

See More Products
assembly buyers guide

The latest news and information

Content focused on processes, technologies and strategies for assembling discrete parts into finished products

Register!
  • More
    • Assembly Plant of the Year
    • Manufacturing Group
    • List Rental
    • Organizations
    • Connect
    • Want More?
    • Polls
    • Privacy Policy
    • Subscribe
    • Survey And Sample
  • PRIVACY
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • TERMS & CONDITIONS
    • DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION
    • PRIVACY REQUEST
    • ACCESSIBILITY

Copyright ©2021. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing