In the early 1980s, a product design methodology called design for assembly (DFA) began to gain popularity. It focused on improving efficiency by evaluating the amount of labor required for assembly. Since that time, the DFA methodology has been adopted with much success by more than 850 corporations.
Nonetheless, in the past 10 years, there has been a resurgence in a different design philosophy—a very old one—that is undermining the productivity gains companies achieved through DFA. This outdated philosophy promotes cost reduction by focusing on the cost of individual parts within the product, rather than on how the system of integrated parts affects overall cost and performance.