A commonly seen struggle many companies face is product designed in one place yet manufactured in another, causing many challenges and issues during hand over between development side and production side. Another commonly seen struggle is that many activities during product development stage have similar intent with different focuses, which is all to identify and prevent problems in the future, somewhat redundant efforts. To deal with the challenges, a major network equipment provider developed and adopted a unique practice on Design for Manufacturability and Assembly (DFMA) leveraging its award-wining Lean Design For Six Sigma (LDFSS) program.
Key takeaways:
• For new products, right after the 1st prototype, a unique DFMA event is held to jointly address a whole host of manufacturing related concerns: modularity / part reuse, Lean manufacturing & assembly, field installation & maintenance, FMEA, etc.
• The DFMA event are also used to improve productivity through redesigning existing products.
• It has achieved great results and became a key component of the LDFSS program.
Gary Jing Gary G. Jing is a Master Black Belt and Lean Six Sigma deployment leader, currently doing consulting in Lean Six Sigma & quality space. He has worked as a continuous improvement director at CommScope in Shakopee, MN. He was on the U.S. delegation to ISO Technical Committee 176 and participated in the development of ISO 9000:2015 as the secretary. He earned a doctorate in industrial engineering from the University of Cincinnati. A fellow of ASQ, Jing is an ASQ-certified quality manager and quality engineer.