EVALUATING DESIGN PROPOSALS

7. EVALUATING DESIGN PROPOSALS

Designers need some method for knowing if the new or redesigned product will meet its manufacturability and other objectives. The designers general judgment may be very sound in weighing the designs conformance to planned design attributes, but an objective measurement almost always will be better. Every design variation has consequences in the properties of the product, including its manufacturability. Evaluation is needed not only so that the design team or designer can know if the products objectives have been met but also so that alternative designs can be compared and the most eective alternative selected. Preferably, the design team should be able to carry out an evaluation early in the design process, ideally at the concept stage. Then the time-consuming and expensive development and detailed work does not take place unless it is veried that the proposed approach is really eective. The procedure should be one that can be applied easily and routinely by the product designers. It should employ some numerical rating, index, or cost so that as objective a comparison as possible can be made between alternative designs.

7.1. EVALUATING MANUFACTURABILITY

Manufacturing cost is the most complete measure of manufacturability. It can be expressed as a total cost for the product or component or can be approximated with some major cost element such as direct labor time. Most progress of all has taken place with design for assembly (DFA). Providing an evaluation of assembly designs is somewhat simpler than

evaluating the manufacturability of individual parts, where such factors as tooling cost, yield, and production quantity all weigh more heavily than they do with assemblies. Assembly evaluation systems can provide a rapid and easy comparison between several alternatives. Common measures, in addition to cost, are parts count, design eciency, and assembly time. Direct labor time is a straightforward indicator of manufacturing cost and is usable by itself in a large number of cases. (Exceptions are those in which materials costs, labor rates, and overhead costs also vary signicantly with dierent design variations.) Therefore, in many cases, manufacturability of a series of design choices can be evaluated by estimating and comparing the direct labor time required for production of each design. Eventually, however, a full cost estimate is the ultimate guide to the designer in knowing how well the product design has been engineered for manufacturability. Conventional cost estimates are made by evaluating the materials content of a design and the labor content of the production operations involved. This is a valid and accurate way to estimate the manufacturing cost of a particular design, and hence its manufacturability, although it may be time-consuming. The time element can be reduced by using computer assistance.

7.2. ASSEMBLY EVALUATION SYSTEMS

What are most interesting and useful are cost-estimating computer programs developed specically for DFM use. The longest-standingand in many ways the most useful for DFMare those applicable to assembly evaluation. It should be noted that current programs evaluate the labor content of an assembly design, not the materials costs. Sometimes there are tradeos between materials and labor costs of design alternatives. For example, a complex part made by combining several simpler parts will reduce assembly costs, but the cost of the complex part could conceivably be higher than the cost of several simple parts. Fortunately, however, materials costs are easy and straightforward to estimate from per-pound or per-square-foot data. Materials cost dierences can be combined with the labor cost dierences of alternative designs to arrive at a more nearly total cost comparison. The programs may give a design eciency rating, a ratio comparing the

calculated assembly time with a theoretical ideal for the number of parts involved. There is one other quite useful method to evaluate the manufacturability of assemblies. This is simply to count the number of parts that the design entails. Assemblies with fewer parts normally can be assembled in less time and have higher design eciency ratings. One powerful advantage of these computer programs and the parts-count approach is that they can be used by designers themselves. They provide an easy way for designers to gauge the eectiveness of their eorts. They help to eliminate we versus they feelings that can arise when manufacturing people are doing the evaluation and pressing the designer to simplify the designs. The programs also have guideline information implicit in their tables of time data in that the designers, in working to improve the rating of their designs, will apply guidelines that promote that objective. In this sense, they are also useful in training designers in principles applicable to better, more easily assembled products.

7.3. MANUFACTURABILITY EVALUATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL

PARTS
One simple way to compare the manufacturability of alternative designs of a part is to count the number of process operations that each requires. Other factors being equal, the part with the fewest number of operations will be the simplest to manufacture and the lowest in cost. Of course, tooling complexity and materials cost often must be considered also. Nonetheless, this metric is often a useful one for comparing parts from a DFM standpoint. Some companies have developed systems to facilitate the manufacturability evaluation of piece parts in a product. They are somewhat more complex than the assembly systems described earlier in that there are separate methods for each manufacturing process involved. For example, die castings, injection-molded plastic parts, machine parts, powder-metal parts, and metal stampings each are evaluated with separate systems, since design principles, rules of thumb, and manufacturing costs are dierent for each process. Current systems simplify and ease the task of making an estimate of the

manufacturing cost of a part. They consider tooling cost and amortization, process labor, and materials costs. As in the case of assembly evaluation systems, comparisons can be made for dierent design concepts. Some systems are computerized and are programmed to request the input data needed to develop a cost estimate.

7.4. EVALUATING DFX ATTRIBUTES

All the systems described earlier deal with manufacturability and not the other DFX attributes that are discussed in Chap. 9.2. Evaluating designs for DFX requires dierent, more complex methods such as the following: 1. The attribute being evaluated can be expressed in terms of cost or some other monetary factor. This is dicult because of the intangible nature of many of the DFX attributes. The most intangible factor is the nancial benet that can accrue when a company incorporates desirable attributes into a product and gains additional sales, larger prot margins, or both. For instance, speed to market is emphasized in order to enhance product sales. How much additional prot margin can be generated if the product realization time is reduced by 3 months? Providing an accurate estimate for such a not easily predicted factor is dicult but remains a possible avenue for someone establishing an evaluation system for improved speed to market. Similarly, estimated cost or prot amounts could be related to dierent design concepts when evaluating a design for such attributes as safety, serviceability, reliability, etc. 2. Use a scoring system that rates or ranks design alternatives against some criterion. Ideally, such a system should provide a design eciency or other numerical rating of the extent of the attribute. Normally, systems of this type must be somewhat generalized and rely quite heavily on the experience, knowledge, and judgment of the person making the evaluation. 3. Test the design. This involves making at least one prototype of the proposed product and subjecting it to whatever tests are appropriate for the objectives being evaluated. For example, if reliability is one of the design objectives, life tests are called for; if user friendliness is an objective, a number of user tests of the product with feedback information from the test users is needed.

Almost all DFM and DFX guidelines are still qualitative in nature and often conicting. It would be ideal if the eect of any one design alternative, considered with respect to some DFX recommendation, could be evaluated. There is one way that the DFX guidelines can be related to cost and thereby given quantitative evaluation. This is through use of the life-cycle cost conceptTaguchis concept of overall product quality (see denition in Chap. 9.3). The lower the life-cycle cost for such factors as service, safety, the repair of quality defects, and so on, as well as the initial cost, the better is the DFX performance. As noted earlier, however, many of the life-cycle cost factors are highly intangible and not well suited to quantication. How, for example, can one predict the cost (or prot eect) of sales that are lost due to a poor reliability reputation? How can one predict the cost of product liability lawsuits resulting from safety defects? Broad overall projections of such costs may be possible, but relating them to specic design changes such as changing a sharp corner in a part to a radiused corner (sometimes a safety and sometimes a product reliability factor) is not really feasible. Even calculating the manufacturing cost eect of such a change may be somewhat lengthy and uncertain.

7.5. WHO SHOULD MAKE THE EVALUATION?

The best approach, when possible, is to have the designers themselves make the evaluation. This certainly has speed and accuracy advantages in that there is no need to transfer information about the design from one person to another. The time to prepare documentation and to explain the design concept to the specialist is avoided. One of the advantages of some of the current evaluation systems, particularly those involving assembly or other aspects of manufacturability, is that they make it relatively easy for the designers themselves to carry out the evaluation. In addition to the convenience and time advantages of this, there is also the learning factor that benets the designer. Designers who conduct an evaluation with a prepared system tend to learn the design principles that underlie the system.

7.6. TESTING DESIGN PROPOSALS

Prototypes should be subjected to a variety of tests:

1. Use tests to verify that the product functions as it was designed to. 2. Life testing is important to determine the reliability and useful life of the product and its components. 3. Environmental testing, usually at various temperatures, humidities, and other conditions, conrms the products performance under any extreme conditions that the product may face in use. 4. Field tests help to conrm the successful operation of the product under customeruse conditions. Another purpose of eld tests is to verify that customers will understand and be able to use the product easily and as intended. 5. Shipping tests help to verify the eectiveness of packaging and the sturdiness of the product. Good testing is a powerful and essential step in perfecting the design and in ensuring that it meets the varied objectives of the program.
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James G.Bralla: Design for Manufacturability Handbook, Second Edition. EVALUATING DESIGN PROPOSALS, Chapter (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1999, 1986), AccessEngineering

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