Design for Manufacturability (AKA manufacturability design or DFM) is a common engineering products design practice that makes them easy to manufacture. DFM describes how to design and manufacture a product in a productive way. DFM will eliminate potential problems at the design stage. Other factors can come into play such as raw material type & shape, dimensional tolerances, etc.
Depending on the different types of manufacturing processes, there are certain guidelines for practicing DFM . These DFM instructions will help you to precisely define the various tolerances, rules, and manufacturing quality checks.
In the Printed Circuit Box design process, DFM results in a set of design guidelines that attempt to ensure manufacturability. Thus, possible production problems can be solved at this stage. Ideally, DFM recommendations take into account the processes and capabilities of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, DFM is constantly evolving. As manufacturing companies evolve and automate, these processes tend to become cheaper. DFM is commonly used to reduce these costs. For example, if a process can be performed automatically by machines then it is likely to be cheaper than manually.
Due to miniaturization, achieving high performance designs in current VLSI technologies has become an extremely difficult task. With tha in mind, DFM methodology includes a set of methods for changing the integrated circuits (ICs) design in order to make them more manufacturable – To improve their functional & parametric output or their reliability
The Design for Inspection (DFI) concept should complement and collaborate with Design for Manufacturability (DFM) to reduce product manufacturing cost and improve usability. There are times when this method can cause delays because it requires preparing presentations and documents for a project review.
To address this issue, it is proposed that instead of periodic reviews, organizations could adopt an empowerment structure. Especially during the product development stage, where top management empowers project managers to evaluate production results against expectations for cost, quality, and development time.
Additive manufacturing enhances the designer’s ability to optimize the product design. Designs intended for additive manufacturing are sometimes very different from those intended for machining. In addition, due to some size limitations of additive manufacturing machines, large structures are split into smaller sections with self-assembly features.
