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DFMA: What Is It?

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (or DFMA) is where the process is designed for ease of manufacture and ease of assembly, so that everything fits perfectly together at the end.  This can help a product be made with fewer parts and at the best price.

A good example of this is IKEA – especially in Europe – where everything is made to fit together perfectly so the end user can assemble easily, and prices are much cheaper than can be found in other stores.

In your own work it might be a process that has all its parts come together at exactly the right time and fit seamlessly for the end result.  The idea is to keep it simple, or to quote a phrase that is attributed with Albert Einstein – “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

You will notice that DFMA also ties in with increasing First Pass Yield, reducing defects and reducing the wastes of “over-processing or over-designing” a product.

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