ABSTRACT
One lesson from these stories is that to do well at product design, product designers must be familiar with the manufacturing process. This familiarity develops through designers working next to manufacturing engineers as a team to design the product such that it
can be made well
, a concept called design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA). DFMA is just one of many issues that must be addressed in product design. More broadly, product design should flush out and address all issues relating to the product life cycle, and it should incorporate considerations of these into the final design. This approach to product design and development, which includes accounting in the initial design stage for the product’s manufacture, distribution, sale, usage, and ultimate disposal, is called concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering is performed by a cross-functional team that, besides engineers and designers, includes representatives from marketing, sales, finance, purchasing, suppliers, and even customers. The goal of the team is to create a product design that is not only robust but also considers issues in manufacturing (e.g., parts count, number of assembly operations and setups, ease of assembly and pokayoking), procurement (part availability, capability of parts suppliers), customer requirements (for maintenance and repair, as well as operational), and product pricing and promotion.
