Manufacturing Cost Reduction With Careful Design Optimization
Optimization of materials is one way to keep costs down. If a material is harder to find or its availability is rarer, this will make it more costly. If a lower cost option can be employed, this needs to be investigated to keep costs of production at a minimum. Looking at the manufacturing process could find savings and improvements. If the manufacturing procedures are manual, savings could be garnered if more automation were used. It may also be discovered that the system of manufacturing was not accurately tested and too much waste is cultivated, resulting in much scrap, for example. Having excess scrap is a loss of revenue where the metal or material could have been used to produce a product if testing were more accurate as was the manufacturing process. If a company opts to outsource some of its manufacturing to cut costs, one important contemplation is in the product quality. If the quality of the product is lost due to the reduction in costs, this may not be as productive in saving money as hoped.
Concurrent Engineering and Design for Manufacturability
Another way of saving on costs is through concurrent engineering. This is when a product is designed at the same time as the manufacturing process for the production of the product. Another way is design for manufacturability (DFM) where products are designed in a way to optimize all of the facets of the manufacturing process such as testing, shipping, fabrication, ensuring customer satisfaction and the best costs. DFM advocates products to be manufactured with the fewest number of parts and therefore less waste and cost reduction. Design of a product is conducted so that the product will be able to work with other parts and standardization is promoted.
Other Cost Saving Methods
Working with a vendor to help in product design can help in keeping costs down. They can assist in preventing decision making such as making a product unnecessarily fancier for aesthetic purposes. Vendors will comprehend the issues that the manufacturers face and can assist in offering solutions. This additionally imparts a learning opportunity so that the manufacturer and vendor learn how to produce the jobs quicker and better each time.
Input has to be garnered from staff in every department of the organization in order to cut costs. Talking to people who actually do the jobs on the floor can yield ideas on how to make changes to save money.
Understanding all problems that have happened in the past and learning from them so that they will not happen again in the future is imperative. Ensure designs are as simple as they can be so the processing, fabrication and assembly are simple. Any issues in processing, assembly and fabrication can result in enormous costs to repair. Follow guidelines for processes of design. For example, there are certain guidelines for operation of a laser cutter so follow them to the letter every time the laser cutter is operated. Do not design for right- and left-hand parts but produce a product that can be employed either way so as not to end up with a huge amount of stock. Have a symmetrical product so it is easy to assemble and avoids unnecessary complexity. Always produce a quality item. It is less expensive to do it correctly the first time than to fix it later on.
Marc Anderes is the VP of Operations of Maloya Laser which specializes in Metal Manufacturing and Laser Cutting with advanced laser technologies, targeting medical, aerospace, scientific and transportation requirements.
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