Contract Manufacturing Services

Design for Manufacturing (DFM)

An approved prototype is an important milestone, and while your product may look ready for manufacturing, it still has a way to go.

There’s another step involved called DFM, or Design for Manufacturing, or sometimes called Design for Manufacturability. You might also see it called Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, or DFMA.

DFM is the essential, but often overlooked, step in the process where we prepare your product for manufacturing on a larger scale.

What is Design for Manufacturing?

Building a prototype is one thing, but now you need to build 100 of them, or 1,000, or more.

The process your engineers used to build your prototype was painstakingly slow with lots of trial and error.

It is not the process you will need to build your product in larger quantities.

For that, you need a manufacturing process that emphasizes product consistencies, manufacturing efficiencies and cost reduction.

DFM is your bridge to manufacturing

When your product is ready for manufacturing, you will start asking different questions, like…

• how much variability will we see in production?
• how can we produce this product more efficiently?
• how can we reduce the cost of the product?
• what manufacturing methods will we use?
• how much of an investment will we need to make in tooling?
• will the product need to be changed after a period of time?

Know your risk before you build

DFM is in part an analysis of the risk you are willing to take before you invest significant dollars in manufacturing and tooling.

One key element in that calculation is quantity – how many units of this product are you planning to build?

Quantity will help you determine whether to make significant investments in tooling and parts production.

You will be asking yourself “how far can we go in manufacturing before we start to realize this process isn’t working?”

DFM will help you answer those questions.

Go to Manufacturing Documentation –>