DFMA to Reduce Manufacturing Costs, Says Boothroyd Survey
 WAKEFIELD,
RI, Oct 15, 2007 - Sixty-eight percent of a survey group, including Fortune
400 companies, measured an increase in production throughput, and 47 percent
an increase in profit per unit of factory floor space, after applying Design
for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) techniques to their organizations’
supply chains. A roundtable discussion of these and other results from the
questionnaire, conducted by Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc., is now available at
http://www.dfma.com/downstream/.
Respondents included Dell, Motorola, TRW Automotive, Raytheon, MDS
Analytical Technologies, Magna Intier Automotive Seating and other leading
North American manufacturers. Some participants also contributed to a candid
roundtable discussion about applying design simplification and early costing
to Lean and Six Sigma programs, along with the opportunities missed by
industry in measuring financial best practices.
“We achieved a 300 percent increase in profit per square foot of factory
floor space by taking a lot of cost and labor out of product using DFMA
tools,” said Mike Shipulski, director of engineering, Hypertherm, Inc., a
leader in plasma cutting technology. “Like many others who participated in
this survey, we’ve barely begun documenting some of the savings we know
we’re achieving. Everyone in industry recognizes the limitations of using
traditional cost accounting methods to identify overhead savings outside the
areas of directly applied labor and materials.”
Boothroyd Dewhurst President John Gilligan pointed out that there has
been a great deal of investment in manufacturing approaches, from Lean to
PLM, intended to cut costs. “It’s critical that people understand how early
design decisions profoundly affect the savings achieved by these other
efforts,” he said. “This survey clearly demonstrates that it’s time to open
a deeper dialogue about the relationship between design efficiency and total
manufacturing returns.”
About Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.
Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc., was the first company to commercialize Design
for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) methodologies and software tools, which
make it possible to evaluate, estimate, and reduce the manufacturing cost of
a product in the design phase through product simplification and cost
estimation. Hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies, including Dell, John Deere,
Harley-Davidson, and Whirlpool, use DFMA to cut the costs of their
manufactured products and achieve design innovation in their markets. The
company was founded in 1983 and received the National Medal of Technology
Award in 1991.
For more information visit www.dfma.com.
or E-mail to info@dfma.com.
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