What Exactly is DFMA and Why Do I Care?

Use DFMA, QFD, and FMEA to Conduct Projects

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

The origins of APQP can be found in the automotive industry. The processes are costly, but the cost of failure is greater. The volumes experienced in the automotive industry allow for such costs to be reasonable when experienced at the per unit level. What does that have to do with DFMA, QFD, and FMEA? A lot! Each of these concepts has been applied in different industries with different levels of precision and granularity. What exactly is DFMA?

One of the luxuries I have experienced is the application of continuous improvement tools and techniques across vastly different industry segments. Each has their own personality and financial profile. Every tool and technique looks a little different in every organization. The same is true for these tools.

Design for Manufacture and Assembly changes from automotive to heavy equipment to telecommunications and biopharmaceuticals. The concepts still apply. The challenge becomes translation. Quality Function Deployment and Failure Mode Effects and Analysis are no different. Translation is required in many ways.

What I am getting at is the value of the tools we have available to us and the cost of using them in a way that fits our current situation. Understanding the concept of these tools before attempting to apply them is the critical step before translation can occur. At one of my previous employers, we did not have the volumes to apply certain automotive tools in the same way as Ford would have. We did find a way to achieve the same outcomes by modifying our approach to meeting our financial conditions and our quality requirements.

What Exactly is DFMA?

If you are unfamiliar with these tools, I encourage you to explore them. Get a sense of the objective and begin to move your processes in that direction. Do you think Taiichi Ohno or Shigeo Shingo got to kanban or SMED in one pass? There is always experimentation, trial and error associated with growth. Don’t lose sight of the cost of improvement. There is much to learn from DFMA, QFD, and FMEA if you are willing to accept the challenge to learn and then to apply what you see. That is the key to continuous improvement.