Preventive Optimisation of Costs and Quality for the Total Life Cycle - Design for Manufacture, Assembly, Service, Environment (DFMA)

The increased global competition has led to immense interest in the development of new ways of increasing productivity and quality. It is a well known fact that the costs of manufactured products are largely determined at the design stage. It is important to consider manufacturability early in the design. To be able to cut life cycle costs at an early stage the following DFMA-tools have been developed: Design for Manufacture (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), Design for Service (DFS) and Design for Environment (DFE).

This contribution shows the design for the complete life cycle - with the tools DFM, DFA, DFS, DFE - its present state and some industrial applications. Using an electronic company as an example the implementation of DFMA in an TQM-environment and their integration in the product development process is shown. The value-assessment metric ‘Materials, Energy, Toxicity (MET)’ is also described.