DFMPro

Understanding Critical Aspects of Plastic Part Design and Manufacturing

2011-10-10T08:25:00.000+01:00

Understanding Critical Aspects of Plastic Part Design and Manufacturing

Plastic parts are essential components of most of the industries starting from Automotive to hi-tech electronics and household products from toys to kitchen appliances. Plastic is possibly the most versatile and economical material used in many applications. Developing plastic products in the shortest possible time at the right cost and quality gives organizations a definitive edge over their competitors. Therefore, manufacturers across the globe pay special attention to the time spent in bringing a new product/variant to the market. Optimizing this process right from the design stage has a domino effect on the entire lifecycle. Design decisions taken early in the cycle affect not only the cost of the product but also contribute to its quality and life-span.

However it is important to understand the critical design parameters while designing plastic components –

 Wall thickness

 Undercuts

 Ribs

 Bosses

 Drafts

 Holes

 Radii and many more critical areas

Join us for a webinar, to understand the in-depth design aspects of plastic products.

Speakers:

Paul A. Tres, founder - Engineering Training Services, bestselling author and an international speaker on plastic product development and design having years of experience in design, marketing, selling and manufacture of plastic components and system. Mr. Tres offers a broad perspective of the plastic industry in general and to the plastic marketing, manufacturing, material selection, and part design in special. He will explain the best design practices in detail with examples and case studies.

Nikhil Dalvi, Strategic Account Manager, Geometric, who will demonstrate the advance CAD based technology to ensure producible injection molding design. You will also understand how this advanced technology can simplify life of a design and manufacturing engineer and help to reduce downstream manufacturing problems and improve productivity.

So join us and take advantage of this one-of-kind opportunity to hear, interact and understand how progressive companies are leveraging these best plastic design practices to their advantage.

20 Oct, 2011 08:00 AM PST/PDT i.e 10:00 AM CST/CDT i.e 11:30 AM EST/EDT i.e 17:30 PM CET (EU)

Registration link : https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/413874200

Geometric Receives Frost & Sullivan’s 2011 Global Enabling Technology Award for DFMPro

2011-08-25T06:39:00.002+01:00

DFMPro recognized for technological innovation in ‘design for manufacturing’ validation Mumbai, India, August 23, 2011: Geometric Limited (BSE: 532312, NSE: GEOMETRIC), a leader in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Global Engineering Services, and Offshore Product Development (OPD) solutions and technologies, today announced that it has received the prestigious 2011 Global Enabling Technology Award for Computer Aided Design (CAD) from the leading independent research consultancy, Frost & Sullivan. This award was conferred on Geometric’s DFMPro, a CAD integrated product, for its ability to facilitate upstream design validation for manufacturability, by providing an automated design review process and employing a standard operating procedure for knowledge capture and reuse.

“The advent of advanced authoring and design tools allows designer engineers to explore effective and efficient design alternatives. However, design engineers have not been able to maximise this potential due to the challenges in translating these designs into manufacture-able products. A product like DFMPro, which validates the manufacturability of designs right at the design stage, helps address this issue, and eliminates manufacturability concerns of any design”, said Muthukumar Viswanathan, Practice Director, Frost & Sullivan.

Geometric’s design for manufacturability solution was evaluated based on its ability to enhance current products, its potential for market acceptance, delivery of technology to market, and its end-user transition and recognition.

On receiving the award, Mr. Manu Parpia, MD & CEO, Geometric said, “Geometric has been developing products in the geometry domain for over two decades. We launched DFMPro in 2008 to help manufacturing companies reduce costs by identifying designs that are difficult, expensive or impossible to manufacture. We continue to improve the product over the years by covering more processes, manufacturability rules and checks. Frost & Sullivan’s award is a recognition of the contribution Geometric can make to help manufacturing companies compete”.

DFMPro is currently available for machining (drilling, prismatic milling, and lathe machining/ turning), sheet metal fabrication, injection molding, and assembly. Viswanathan added, “The seamless integration of DFMPro with leading CAD platforms makes it easy to use. This automation of a traditionally manual process helps reduce design iterations, cost of design and time-to-market. In most cases, DFMPro has been known to reduce time by more than 50 percent.”

DFMPro has a proven track record with customers in various industries. One such company is Motorola Solutions Inc. The company’s Director of Mechanical Engineering Services, Mr. Vikram Bhargava said, “Congratulations to the DFMPro team for winning this accolade. We have been using DFMPro for our design validations and are impressed by its intuitiveness, seamless integration within our CAD platform and the ability to customize design rules. DFMPro has helped us improve design and reduce downstream issues.”

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

For online demo and to understand the product in detail, please visit www.dfmpro.com.

About Frost & Sullivan:
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents.

About Geometric:
Geometric is a specialist in the domain of engineering solutions, services and technologies. Its portfolio of Global Engineering services and Digital Technology solutions for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) enables companies to formulate, implement, and execute global engineering and manufacturing strategies aimed at achieving greater efficiencies in the product realization lifecycle. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, Geometric was incorporated in 1994 and is listed on the Bombay and National Stock Exchanges. The company recorded consolidated revenues of Rupees 6.21 billion (US Dollars 136.47 million) for the year ended March 2011. It employs over 3900 people across 10 global delivery locations in the US, Romania, India, and China. Geometric was assessed as CMMI 1.1 Level 5 for its software services and is ISO 9001:2008 certified for engineering operations. The company’s operations are also ISO 27001:2005 certified.

Geometric’s Geometry Technology Solutions (GTS) business unit develops cutting-edge point productivity solutions that enhance design and improve manufacturing operations. The end-user products from Geometric include CAMWorks®, eDrawings® Publisher, DFMPro, GeomCaliper® and 3DPaintBrush™. The key technologies from Geometric are NestLib®, Feature Recognition (FR), GeomDiff and 3DSearchIT®. Geometric licenses these technologies to OEM partners and also designs and implements customized process solutions using these technologies for industrial customers. For further details about Geometric’s GTS business unit, please visit www.geometricglobal.com/products
or call +1.480.222.2255

DFMPro at PlanetPTC Live 2011, Las Vegas

2011-06-21T06:05:00.001+01:00

Our Customer - Paul Lalinde from Motorola

Motorola Presentation on DFMPro

Live Demo

DFMPro 3.0 to be showcased at PlanetPTC Live 2011

2011-05-18T05:01:00.000+01:00

Geometric to showcase DFMPro 3.0 at PlanetPTC Live 2011

See live demonstrations of new additions to the product -- multiple, quick and precise clearance checks at the click of a button, intuitive hole alignment checks and a lot more.

Visit Booth #510, at PlanetPTC Live, from 12-15 June, 2011 at the Caesars Palace Las Vegas Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Read more here --
http://www.geometricglobal.com/images/file/Geometric_Media_Release_DFMPro_PTCPlanet_May_17_2011.pdf

Motorola Solutions to present its experience with DFMPro at PlanetPTC Live 2011

2011-05-18T04:48:00.002+01:00

Mr. Paul Lalinde from Motorola Solutions will be presenting on the topic of ‘Automating
Manufacturability checks with DFMPro’ during the partner track session at 11:00 AM on June 14, 2011 in the Octavius 20 room. Mr. Lalinde will share his experiences on the various challenges faced by Motorola Solutions in the area of DFM, the measures he took to address some of those problems, and how DFMPro helped automate the process.

Read more at http://www.geometricglobal.com/images/file/Geometric_Media_Release_DFMPro_PTCPlanet_May_17_2011.pdf

Medical Equipment - Accelerate design to manufacture process & reduce product cost Part2

2011-05-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

2011-04-25T14:25:00.000+01:00

Medical Equipment

Accelerate design to manufacture process & reduce product cost

In today’s market environment, cost & cycle time reduction are constant endeavors. One of the critical phases which has significant impact on cost & cycle time is design to manufacture phase.

This phase is inherently iterative as it tries to achieve multi objective optimization and involves collaboration with cross functional stake holders (for e.g. Manufacturing Engineering). These iterative cycles get exponentially costly as they go closer to final production phase.

Geometric has developed a unique Design For Manufacturability (DFM) solution which helps organization reduce design iterations, improve organization productivity & collaboration. It is a tool which provides upfront verification of parts for Manufacturability during design stage. It also helps designers make product cost decision by identifying areas of design that are difficult, expensive or impossible to manufacture.

DFMPro benefits:

· Improve design productivity

· Ensure Assured quality

· Reduce cost

· Capture knowledge

· Collaborate design

Join us for a live and interactive webinar to discover how you can reduce time and cost by addressing manufacturability problems right at design stage.

Register Here

Webinar Topic :	Accelerate Design to manufacture process & Reduce product cost
Date :	Wednesday, 4^th May 2011
Time :	8:00 am (PST), 10:00 am (CST), 11:00 am (EST)
Speakers :	Rahul Rajadhyaksha (Product Manager, DFMPro, Geometric) Vivek Khare (Director Business Operations, Geometric)

You can also click on following link to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/738784193

Know anyone else who would be interested in this webinar? Attendance is free so simply forward this message on to them.

About Geometric

Geometric (www.geometricglobal.com) is a specialist in the domain of engineering solutions, services and technologies. Its portfolio
of Global Engineering services and Digital Technology solutions for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) enables companies to
formulate, implement, and execute global engineering and manufacturing strategies aimed at achieving greater efficiencies in the
product realization lifecycle.

The copyright/ trademarks of all products referenced herein are held by their respective companies.

Reducing Design to manufacturing iterations

2011-04-21T20:43:00.000+01:00

Want to know how to reduce design to manufacturing iterations?

Check out his 2 min video.

http://bit.ly/dfmpro-proe

DFMPro @ SWW 2011

2011-02-07T08:30:00.001Z

Thank you for visiting DFMPro booth at SolidWorks World 2011.

DFMPro - The new Castings Module!

2011-02-02T09:29:00.000Z

DFMPro Castings Module in SolidWorks ( Sneak Peek )

Full featured demo will be avalable soon!

New Rules!

1) Wall thickness variation
2) Minimum Draft Angle
3) Fillet Radius
4) Hole Distance to part edge
5) Surace finish
6) Mold wall thickness .... and many more!

Geometric to unveil DFMPro for Solidworks with new features during Solidworks world 2011

2011-01-13T08:34:00.002Z

DFMPro for SolidWorks focuses on improving ease of DFM(Design for Manufacturing) analysis and reporting by providing the following new functions: Casting module with built-in rules including thickness checks, draft angle checks and tolerance checks. These easy-to-configure and easy-to-use checks will help designers quickly check and refine their designs to avoid possible problems during casting. The SolidWorks version of DFMPro now supports the Microsoft Excel based DFM analysis report
The new casting module broadens the scope of out-of-the-box manufacturing checks provided by DFMPro. The Excel-based reports combined with eDrawings reports facilitate easy collaboration, communication and tracking of DFM issues to closure. For more information on DFMPro, please visit
http://dfmpro.com

DFMPro version 2.3 to be showcased during IMTEX 2011, Bangalore(Bengaluru), India

2011-01-11T07:26:00.000Z

Geometric will showcase DFMPro version 2.3 at the Bangalore International Exhibition Center in Bangalore, India.

DFMPro version 2.3 focuses on improving the ease of DFM review comments to closure with support for formed features and inclusion of Microsoft Excel based DFM analysis reports. A new grouping functionality for wall thickness related rules has been added in the Injection Molding module that allows users to easily segregate results into groups based on the thickness ranges.CAD users will be able to quickly verify their designs within Pro/ENGINEER® and SolidWorks®,thus, reducing cost and time-to-market, while also improving the quality of manufactured parts.DFMPro 2.3 also facilitates collaborative design review process by generating comprehensive 3D reports in eDrawings® format. This capability is very useful for suppliers who can quickly generate eDrawings reports and share it with the OEM for their review, comments and acceptance.

DFMPro is Desktop Engineering's Pick of the Week

2010-08-20T08:01:00.003+01:00

Certain key points from the article...

ECOs are a drag, both in terms of money and time squandered.
If you had just designed your parts from the beginning with a consistent set of rules that made late changes to the design less likely, late-in-the-process activities like manufacturing easier, you could fabricate your parts efficiently and eliminate all that time and money you hemorrhage fussing and fixing them late in the game.

How does DFMPro help address these points?
Read more at http://www.deskeng.com/articles/aaaybp.htm
and
Visit http://www.dfmpro.com for additional information

Geometric releases DFMPro version 2.2 for Pro/ENGINEER

2010-08-12T13:39:00.003+01:00

Version 2.2 of DFMPro for Pro/ENGINEER is available for download on Geometric website.
http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com/products/userdetails.aspx?download=1&productid=76&RID=0

DFM Analysis in Pro/ENGINEER environment becomes more powerful with the addition of new injection molding rules. A new functionality, to export and import analysis results, allows users to save the DFMPro analysis, and view it at their convenience; and also to share the analysis results with other DFMPro users . The batch mode of DFMPro includes support to generate the exported results. This release also adds support for a 3D report which helps user collaborate quickly and easily on the manufacturability aspects of the CAD model.

Do download and provide your feedback. Write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com for additional information.

Controlling Manufacturability Issues in the Outsourcing Scenario

2010-08-05T15:43:00.002+01:00

Eric Chapel was elated. He had just signed a outsourcing contract with a South American firm, EngineersAtWork. The arrangement would save his company, JK and Sons, around a million dollars a year. JK and Sons designed and manufactured ventilation systems for large businesses. The South American firm was going to provide him with Engineering Services at half the cost of what it would take in the UK. The icing on the cake was that he had a strong buy-in from the designers in the UK. The reason behind that was simple – the portion of the tasks getting outsourced was only the creation of design variants. The designers based in UK would control the creation of new designs whereas any new variants of existing designs would be handled by EngineersAtWork under their guidance. Thus the team could handle more jobs leading to additional revenue and higher productivity. Things looked rosy.

Design Engineers in the UK would receive requirements for a new variant, prepare specifications for the required design changes and send them over to EngineersAtWork, who would, in turn, complete the required changes, create the new variant and send it back. As time passed, Eric was slowly losing his sleep on the problems which slowly started surfacing with the arrangement. Slowly, manufacturability issues started showing up in the designs being created by EngineersAtWork. Design rework began affecting the project schedules. Eric did not have any problem with the attitude and dedication of the team at EngineersAtWork. He knew that they were sincere and committed in their efforts. It was just that they did not the required shop floor experience. The original designs created by the engineers in the UK were great examples of easy to manufacture components. However, changes being introduced by the designers at EngineersAtWork were causing manufacturing problems. The designs were as per the specifications created by the team in the UK but they did not adhere to the manufacturing guidelines. One way out was to tighten the design specs to include the manufacturing checklists but that would definitely be overkill. Creating specifications would take an unrealistic amount of time. Going through manual checklists was also time consuming. Most of the manufacturing knowledge of the design engineers at JK and Sons was built from years of experience and visits to the shop floor. Though they were reviewing the designs they received, some issues would persist. Eric wanted some tool which the team at EngineersAtWork could use for manufacturability analysis.

It was then his friend Gus suggested DFMPro. Gus was using this tool in his organization. He told Eric that it really helped his fresh-out-of-college design engineers quickly come up to speed with manufacturing aspects of a design. Eric got EngineersAtWork to start using the tool. The results started showing in a few weeks. The manufacturability issues slowly disappeared. The tool also identified certain issues in the original designs which also brought down the manufacturing time and cost. Thanks to DFMPro, JK and Sons and EngineersAtWork successfully celebrated their first year of association.

Visit dfmpro.geometricglobal.com or write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com for more information on how you can benefit from DFMPro.

Disclaimer: All names and characters mentioned in the stories are fictitious. Any resemblance with real characters/ entities should be considered as mere coincidence

Day 2 @ PTC/user

2010-06-08T02:53:00.002+01:00

Day 2 of PTC/user concludes here @ Orlando.

It was a long day starting with the session from the PTC CEO, future CEO (Jim) and VP of Product development. The Pro/E roadmap was interesting as well.

Speaking of roadmaps, DFMProe v2.2 is nearing its release date. We have finalized the items for v2.3 based on the variety of inputs we have had from customers and prospects. Any last minute inputs ? Let us know...

It was a loooooong day...8:00aM to 9 PM.

Looking forward to day 3.

DFMPro reports from PTC/user @ Orlando

2010-06-07T03:14:00.002+01:00

PTC/user is off to a great start. lots of attendees..had fun interacting with Pro/E users... met some customers and a lot of prospects... automated DFM checks with Pro/E is catching on...
besides DFMPro, we are also demonstrating eDrawings publishers and GeomCaliper.

we are here two more days..so do drop by @ booth 307.

DFMPro @ PTC User/World 2010

2010-05-25T05:20:00.002+01:00

PTC User/World 2010 will be held from 6-9 June 2010 in Orlando, Florida. You can see DFMPro in action at Booth # 307
Learn how DFMPro’s Injection Molding module can benefit you in designing plastic parts.

We will conduct a hands-on demo session at our booth. If you have any designs to want to validate using DFMPro, here's your chance.

Visit Booth # 307 @ PTC User/World 2010.

v2.1 of DFMPro is available for download

2010-02-02T09:18:00.004Z

Visit http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com/ for more details

The highlight of this release is the new Injection Molding module which allows users to validate plastic designs to ensure that they are easier and cost-effective to manufacture using Injection Molding.

Significant functionalities available in DFMPro include

design validation for machining, sheet metal and injection molding in a single tool. More than 50 out-of-the-box rules
add your own rules. customize and improve your DFM knowledge base
generate reports ( xml and eDrawings)
support for batch mode processing
support for assemblies -- process all parts in the assembly in a single run

A new approach to design and manufacturing collaboration

2010-01-22T08:21:00.002Z

Design and manufacturing guys have collaborated for years using pencil and paper, word documents , powerpoint slides and images. With the advent of 3D viewers and publishing tools like eDrawings which were fun to work with, life became easier.

What next ?

This paper looks at how design and manufacturing can collaborate in a faster and easier manner.

Read more at http://www10.mcadcafe.com/link/display_detail.php?link_id=29974( you will need to register for free for accessing the article)

Webinars on "Automated DFM Reviews for Sheetmetal"

2009-11-03T03:49:00.003Z

One cannot stress enough the importance of reviewing a design before it moves ahead in the development and production cycle. The cost of correcting a defect gets multiplied with every progress made in the physical creation of a product. There are many simple guidelines for sheetmetal designs which can help save time and money spent in rework and scrap associated with manufacturing defects.
Attend the webinar on "Automated DFM Reviews for Sheetmetal" to learn how......
http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com/dfm.aspx

DFM Review Automation....

2009-07-10T07:22:00.002+01:00

Why should you go for it?
The DFM review is a defined process in many organizations. Many have derived benefits in terms of reduced time-to-market, lesser waste and less of rework. But how do you improve upon this process? Automate! Deploy a tool which which does the mundane checks for you leaving you free to concentrate on more value added stuff.

How should you go about it?
First of all, choose the right software. Look for software which is easy to use and learn and integrates well with your CAD tool. Look for continuous improvements in the DFM review process.

How do you stand to gain?
Read more at
http://www10.mcadcafe.com/link/display_detail.php?link_id=27994
( you will need to register for free for accessing the article)

Knowledge Retention using DFMPro

2009-06-26T07:53:00.001+01:00

Robin, Operations Manager at one of the most productive sites of Rapid Productions Limited, was looking one year ahead. The last year was a breeze. Once again, his operations were the toast of the company. But he knew that the next year was going to be a challenge and he also knew why. One of the reasons of the success of his operations was the experience of the design and manufacturing departments. Many of the engineers has spent their lifetime at Rapid Productions and were thoroughly aware of the design to manufacturing requirements. There were design engineers, who were aware of manufacturability aspects and there were manufacturing engineers who knew why a design was created in the way it was. But the problem Robin had was that many of these engineers were nearing retirement. As a matter of fact, 2-3 of them were retiring next year. Robin knew that much of the high productivity of the operations could be attributed to the limited number design-manufacturing iteration they had. Robin could easily identify that this was an important factor based on his past experience and he knew that he needed to do something about it. The design engineers were very aware of the manufacturing capabilities of the organization and especially of that site and ensure that their design took these “design for manufacturing” aspects into account. They were not only good at design but also understood the manufacturing implications. Additionally, the experience of the manufacturing engineers was also at hand. Robin understood that with these engineers leaving a lot of the knowledge they had acquired over the years would be lost. This would definitely affect the productivity of the site operations. New engineers joining the organization would take time in understanding the organization specific guidelines. He needed some mechanism to capture the available knowledge and reuse it. Though he knew that he would not be able to capture all 100% DFM knowledge, he wanted to try to setup a system using which they could create a knowledge management framework for DFM.

His search led him to DFMPro, software for automating DFM reviews with a rich set of APIs using which the software could be customized to handle organization specific DFM guidelines as well. Robin set up a task force comprising a few of the experienced design and manufacturing engineers. He also got the help of the customization services of Geometric, the company which developed DFMPro. The task force was assigned a project for a duration of 3 months in which they planned to capture the most important DFM guidelines in the form of customized DFMPro rules. One important feature of DFMPro was that it was integrated within the CAD environment so the rules could be checked during the design stage and corrected if required. Additionally, it also provided batch mode of operation with report generation using which multiple designs could be processed overnight and the generated reports could be viewed offline.

The task force set about religiously capturing the various scenarios, lessons learnt and knowledge gained over so many years in the form of rules embedded within DFMPro. Though some rules had to be noted only in the form of documents or checklists, many of the critical rules of thumb and manufacturing guidelines were successfully transferred to the software. Within a month or so, they had made significant progress. Robin decided to try out the system as a prototype for a few newly recruited design engineers. He was recently facing complaints from the manufacturing department about their lack of manufacturing knowledge. So, he decided to evaluate the newly developed automated DFM review system with the help of these guys. He observed that within a few days after deploying the new system, the design change requests sent by manufacturing showed a decline. Within a few more months, the complete system was in place. The retiring engineers monitored the performance of the system and contributed their knowledge to make it a success. The operation reviews showed that things were improved and the productivity of the new engineers was improving. Robin was happy with the results. Now that he had installed the system in place, he could face the productivity targets of the forthcoming year without any worries.

To know more about the ways in which you can benefit from DFMPro, write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com

Visit http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com for additional information

Reduced quotes using changes suggested by DFMPro can help manufacturers bag more business

2009-06-08T12:47:00.007+01:00

Jimmy works in a manufacturing firm, OnTrack, which delivers machined, turned and fabricated components based on requirements from its clients. The firm operates in a very competitive environment where they have to bid for the manufacturing contracts from clients and compete with at least ten to twelve other firms to win a bid. Generally, the vendors are on equal ground on quality so the winner is generally decided based on cost. OnTrack was struggling to survive since, given the current levels of resources they had, costs could not be reduced further. They had to innovate to survive in this cut throat market. Jimmy was given the job of coming up with ideas and solutions for this tough situation.

Jimmy researched in the market and came across DFMPro, an automated tool that supports several common Design for Manufacturing guidelines for machining and fabrication which helps to produce parts economically with better quality, shorter time and readily available machining tools. Jimmy realized that by employing DFMPro, they could come up with design suggestions which could reduce the manufacturing cost.

For example, in some designs, machined pockets were designed to have sharp corners whereas they were not important from a functional standpoint. Similarly, many designers had a habit of chamfering or filleting all parts edges which again was unnecessary and resulted in increased cost. In many cases, hole diameters were different from standard available tool sizes. For large runs, tool and setup customization may be acceptable but it would drastically affect the cost for short runs.

Such design modifications for ease of manufacturing could be suggested to the client. These could reduce not only the cost of manufacturing but also the time required for delivery. If the customer was ok with these changes, OnTrack could submit a reduced bid and thus possibly get the contract. Jimmy got an evaluation version of DFMPro for SolidWorks and employed these techniques for a few bids and to his surprise, he got a positive response from the client. The prospect readily agreed with the suggested changes when he was informed of the impact those changes on the cost. Not only did OnTrack win the bid, but was named a preferred vendor for future bids. OnTrack was back on track to improving profits thanks to Jimmy and DFMPro.

Disclaimer: All names and characters mentioned in the stories are fictitious. Any resemblance with real characters/ entities should be considered as mere coincidence.

Reduce design change costs using DFMPro

2009-06-07T02:57:00.014+01:00

Harvey, a Senior Engineer with First Choice Electronics, is faced with a tough problem. First Choice produces electronic goods like notebooks, LCD(s) and cell phones. These products have very short life spans. The company needs to innovate and bring new ideas to the market rapidly. Consequently, its design to manufacturing cycle has to be as small as possible. Any lapses or rework lengthens the time to market and the competition noses ahead. So, First Choice has always tried to avoid any design changes which could affect the time to market. However, invariably they have faced design change issues due to various reasons over the years. These changes also increase the cost of producing the product by around 25%. Thankfully, their competitors face the same issues. Hence, this issue has not become a bottleneck.

This year, the global economy faced a recession. World wide, companies experienced dips in sales. Many companies started laying off some of their workforce to reduce cost. First Choice, however, had other plans. They valued their people and decided to take actions to reduce costs in other addressable areas. One of these areas was design changes. Reducing the number of design changes could help First Choice directly improve their bottom-line. First Choice set a target of reducing their design changes to reduce cost by 10% by the end of first year. Harvey was assigned the task of achieving this goal.

Harvey began by studying the various design changes made in the company over the past couple years. He sorted them according to their impact on cost. High cost items occurring frequently needed to be dealt with on a priority. The next step was to formulate a process to detect any factor which could lead to a design change during the design stage itself. One possibility was to create a checklist document which would be manually verified by designer before submitting the design. However, the manual checking process was error prone and would consume significant time for complex models. A tool was needed to implement the checklist in software.

Harvey did some research and came across DFMPro. DFMPro provides a rule framework which could be used to add the design checklist rules as customized rules. The rules could operate on the design features or manufacturing features automatically identified from the model by DFMPro using patented feature recognition technology. This would automate the manual review process. Any design element which could possibly require a change later could be captured in the rule. The rule instance would result in a failure, identifying the problematic area of the design. The designer could then correct it at that point, thus saving an iteration and rework later on.

DFMPro was set up and evaluated for a month. Using DFMPro APIs, rules specific to First Choice were scripted and embedded into the software. Designers started using DFMPro during the design stage. During the month, Harvey identified around 20 possible instances in various designs which could have led to design change requests later on. In one month of evaluation, First Choice could see definite savings which not only covered the cost of DFMPro but contributed directly to the bottom-line. First Choice decided to complete DFMPro deployment and rewarded Harvey for his contribution to the cost saving effort!

Disclaimer: All names and characters mentioned in the stories are fictitious. Any resemblance with real characters/ entities should be considered as mere coincidence.