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Engineering Product Profitability Design and Manufacturing · Mechanical Engineering Made Simple

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  Welcome back, design junkies, to mechanical engineering made
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  simple. We are diving Dee today into
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  what I'd call the secret sauce of profitable product
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  development. This isn't just about building
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  cool things. It's about hard economics and
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  really engineering profitability.
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  That's the core mission right there.
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  We're trying to uncover the critical strategies engineers
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  use to make sure a product is efficient, high quality and
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  maybe most importantly, profitable before the first one
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  even rolls off the line. And the sources you sent show
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  that in this world of, you know, high speed technology churn, the
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  pressure is just immense. But the real leverage, the key
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  to scaling and even just catching up, is all in the
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  upfront technology and design. Exactly.
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  The foundational challenge for any manufacturing company is
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  turning well raw, low value material into a finished,
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  sellable product with the most efficiency and the least
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  economic waste. And some companies don't even
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  know their true cost until it's too late.
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  Way too late. We're talking about companies
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  that don't know the true unit manufacturing cost until well
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  after production has started. So this deep dive is about
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  preventing that that catastrophic failure.
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  And we do that by focusing on three pillars that are all
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  connected, designing aggressively for cost,
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  standardizing all your information, and then finally
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  optimizing the production flow itself.
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  OK. Let's unpack that triad,
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  starting where the rubber meets the road.
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  Designed for manufacturing and assembly, or DFM and A.
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  This is where the cost constraints really come in.
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  DFM and A is the strategic cornerstone.
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  It's a technique used to proactively to get ahead of the
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  cost problem by simplifying the design into its components and
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  making sure the materials, the fabrication processes, that
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  they're all aligned from day one.
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  So it's a total rejection of that old siloed model.
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  Completely. The old engineering designs it,
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  and manufacturing has to just figure out how to make it.
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  That's gone. That model is a recipe for
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  failure. And when you look across all the
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  principles of DFM and A, the single biggest take away seems
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  to be simplicity. The main goal for the design
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  team is to just reduce the number of individual parts.
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  Reducing the part count is, I would argue, the biggest lever
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  you have. Every single part you eliminate
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  takes with it. Not just its own material cost,
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  but a huge amount of complexity and overhead.
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  Right, it's a ripple effect. A massive 1.
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  Fewer assembly steps, less inventory to track, reduce
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  logistics, and critically, fewer opportunities for defects.
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  Simpler design just inherently means higher quality.
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  But to enforce that kind of discipline, you have to give a
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  team a metric they can't ignore. This brings us to the the
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  mandatory cost goal, the unit manufacturing cost target or
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  UMC. And that UMC has to be fixed on
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  day one. The whole team has to be held
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  strictly accountable to hit that number.
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  Yeah, no excuses. And the UMC isn't just some
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  vague number, the calculation is really specific.
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  It's what UMC equals. Burdened assembly Labor plus
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  material cost plus tooling amortization, BLMC and TA.
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  That's it. And if you miss any of those
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  elements, the target becomes worthless.
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  It's not just the cost of raw inputs.
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  Let's dig into that material cost MC because in almost every
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  case, that's the biggest expense in the whole UMC calculation,
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  right? It is BL is your wages benefits
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  overhead. TA is, you know, molds and tools
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  divided by the products life volume.
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  But MC that's where companies get hammered.
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  OK. So what has to be included?
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  Well, it has to include the cost of the transform material, the
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  packaging for the piece parts and this is critical all the
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  adders. Adders, yeah.
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  Adders include DIP that's duty, freight and insurance, plus the
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  material acquisition cost or Matt ACU.
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  The engineering team has to factor these in from the start.
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  I see, so if they design A component and the raw material
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  comes from overseas, underestimating that DIP expense
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  could just blow up the whole model.
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  Instantly, a small percentage miss on a high volume product is
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  a disaster for profitability, so you have to move that full
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  complete material cost estimate way upstream before the design
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  is ever finalized. OK, that makes sense.
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  It prevents that downstream sticker shock.
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  But it does raise a question. If the UMC target is so rigid,
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  what stops engineers from just using the cheapest, lowest
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  quality materials they can find just to hit the number?
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  That's where the other DFM and A principles come in to support
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  quality. The design rules themselves
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  guide engineers toward efficient solutions, not just cheap ones.
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  They apply basic DFA rules like designing parts with self
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  locating features to make assembly easier, or using self
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  fasting features like snap fits instead of adding a separate
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  screw. And making parts do more than
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  one job. Exactly increasing
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  multifunctional parts. A single component doing the job
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  of two, and maybe most important, eliminating assembly
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  adjustments entirely. Those are major failure points.
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  So DFM and A sets the goal of simplicity and it provides the
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  design rules. But to achieve that, you need
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  the second pillar, a standard universal way to talk about
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  every part, every material and every process.
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  That's classification systems. You absolutely cannot manage
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  what you can't describe consistently.
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  The biggest production savings start with something called
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  Group Technology, or GT. And what's the philosophy there?
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  GT is the idea that you maximize efficiency when the design
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  function is seamlessly integrated with materials
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  production, marketing, quality, everyone.
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  If you don't standardize how you identify parts, you just breed
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  chronic problems. Like what?
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  Excess scrap rework, huge amounts of excess inventory,
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  right? All because you keep designing
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  new parts that are basically identical to parts that already
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  exist somewhere else in the company.
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  It's like a massive company wide library system for hardware and
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  the core tool is the part family classification and coding system
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  which defines a part by its basic shape, not its function.
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  Precisely, the goal is to create a digital fingerprint for every
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  single component. Usually it's something like an 8
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  digit code covering basic shape, form features, size, precision
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  and material. And that code isn't just for
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  humans. Not at all.
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  It's used for gender process planning, where a computer can
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  automatically figure out the best way to manufacture the part
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  just by reading its code. What's really fascinating is the
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  logic behind building that code, this difference between E trees
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  and N trees. Can you unpack that?
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  It seems like a critical concept, yeah.
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  Sure, E trees are the foundation.
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  They're hierarchical and mutually exclusive.
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  They force you to make a choice that determines your path.
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  OK, so an example would be. Is the part rotational like a
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  shaft or a wheel or is it non rotational like a housing or a
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  plate? You have to choose one.
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  You can't be both. The other path is eliminated.
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  To a heart or a decision. Exactly.
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  An entry on the other hand, is not mutually exclusive.
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  It's for common attributes that can all exist on the same part
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  special form features. Like holes or threads.
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  Right. Does the part have a hole?
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  A thread and a tab. You can select all three and
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  each tree is like picking the primary color of car, it's red
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  or blue. An entry is the options list.
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  Sunroof, navigation, heated seats, you can have them all.
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  That analogy makes it so much clearer.
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  And this same rigor applies to materials, right?
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  You need an Engineering Materials taxonomy.
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  Oh, it's vital, especially now with all the environmental and
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  cost pressures. Good classification.
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  Let's engineers quickly search for materials based on things
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  like energy requirements or recyclability.
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  I mean, just knowing that recycled aluminum takes only
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  about 10% of the energy of primary aluminum, they can drive
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  massive cost savings and hit sustainability goals.
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  So we have the design goals from DFM and A and the data structure
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  to support them with classification and GT.
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  Now let's move to that final pillar, production planning.
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  We've got the efficient design, the parts are codified.
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  Now we have to actually make the thing and meet customer demand
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  on time. Right, and production planning
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  is all about predictability and that starts with forecasting.
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  There are three main categories of methods here.
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  First, you have qualitative techniques.
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  These rely on expert opinion consumer surveys, usually for
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  brand new products or big policy decisions. 2nd is time series
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  analysis, which just looks at historical data for trends and
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  seasons. Those are causal methods.
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  They're more mathematical. Like regression analysis.
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  They try to find a cause and effect relationship.
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  For instance, how does advertising spend affect product
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  demand? Got it.
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  So once you have that forecast, you have to manage the inventory
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  to meet it. This is where Materials
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  Requirements planning, or MRP, comes in, especially for what's
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  called dependent demand. Yes, MRP is a system that really
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  separates the efficient manufacturers from the rest.
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  See for components in manufacturing, demand is often
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  really irregular, very lumpy. Right?
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  MRP converts the master schedule for the final product into a
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  precise time phase schedule for every single component you need
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  to build it. So instead of just stocking
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  10,000 car door handles because you might need them.
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  Exactly. MRP lets you know you need
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  exactly 1000 on Tuesday, 2500 on Friday, and 0 the next week.
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  The big benefit is you can maintain a much, much lower
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  average inventory. That's huge capital savings.
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  OK. Moving from inventory to the
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  shop floor itself, you have this challenge of job sequencing.
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  You've got, say, 10 jobs to run on three machines.
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  Deciding the order is. It gets exponentially complex.
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  It's. Computationally unfeasible to
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  find the one perfect solution in a big shop, so practitioners
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  rely on heuristic rules which are basically educated
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  shortcuts. And a common one is shortest
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  processing time or SBT, right? In a single machine shop, it's
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  one of the most robust. The rule is simple.
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  Run the job that takes the least amount of time first.
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  Which feels a little counterintuitive.
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  It does, but it's mathematically proven to minimize both the mean
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  flow time, how long a job sits in the shop, and the mean
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  lateness. You're clearing out the queue
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  faster. And Speaking of flow, that
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  brings us to assembly line balancing.
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  The goal here is just to assign work to stations to minimize
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  idle time, right? The balance delay.
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  Exactly. And it gets incredibly
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  complicated when you have mixed model assembly lines where
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  you're building, say, 5 different kinds of vacuum
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  cleaners on the same line. You're not just balancing the
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  work, you're constantly resequencing the models to
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  prevent bottlenecks. All these granular techniques
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  seem to feed into bigger strategies like Time based
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  competition or TBC. They do TBC is all about gaining
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  an advantage by slashing lead times everywhere.
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  Design, manufacturing, delivery, and it's very closely related to
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  the Japanese philosophy. GIT or just in time?
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  Which is really about waste. JIT is the philosophical
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  embodiment of eliminating waste, and waste here is defined very
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  broadly. It's inventories, waiting times,
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  scrap equipment, breakdowns, anything that doesn't add value.
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  It's a holistic system that demands all the precision we've
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  just been talking about. This leads us perfectly into the
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  final section. The actual physical tools you
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  need to execute these plans, the goals of DFM and a high
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  precision multifunctional parts. They often require processes
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  that traditional machining just can't handle.
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  Let's start with plastics. Plastics are notoriously
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  difficult to machine well. The reason is they're poor heat
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  conductors. So the heat builds up in the
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  tool. Exactly.
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  The heat from cutting can't dissipate through the material,
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  so the tool gets extremely hot. This means you need super sharp
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  carbide tools and special coolants to stop the plastic
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  from melting or swelling, which would just ruin your accuracy.
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  And when traditional methods just won't work at all for super
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  hard materials or really complex shapes, you turn to non
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  traditional machining. That's when the tool chest gets
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  really interesting. You have things like
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  electrochemical deburring or ECD.
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  It removes burrs using anotic dissolution.
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  It's like controlled chemical erosion using an electrical
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  current. Ultra precise, no mechanical
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  strategy. Or just using raw energy.
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  Absolutely. Think of laser Beam machining
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  LBM. You're literally melting and
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  vaporizing material with a highly focused beam of light.
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  Or thermally assisted machining Tam, where you use a plasma arc
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  to soften the workpiece just an instant before the cutting tool
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  hits it. These are the only ways to hit
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  those demanding DFM and A tolerances sometimes.
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  For sure, shifting to metal forming, there's a critical cold
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  working process. I want to highlight peening.
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  It's a key technique for preventing fatigue.
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  Peening. So you're basically hammering
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  the surface of the part. In a very controlled way, yes.
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  It's often called shot peening. You're striking the surface
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  repeatedly with tiny metal balls.
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  This creates a thin surface layer that's under intense
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  residual compressive stress. And why is that compressive
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  stress so important? Because almost all mechanical
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  failures in parts under cyclic load.
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  Think gear teeth springs are caused by fatigue.
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  Fatigue starts with tiny surface cracks opening up under tensile
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  stress. So the compressive layer
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  squeezes those cracks shut. It effectively closes them
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  before they can grow. You dramatically delay fatigue
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  failure and ensure the part lasts its full design life.
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  It's a huge payoff for a simple surface pigment.
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  OK, finally, let's touch on mechanical fastening bolts over
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  welding when you need to be able to repair something or adjust
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  it. Right.
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  And for any high strength connection, the key is what's
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  called a friction type connection.
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  Use high strength bolts and you tighten them to an extremely
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  high tensile stress. This creates a massive clamping
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  force between the plates. And that clamping force is
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  what's doing the real work protecting the bolt itself.
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  It is that huge initial preload Shields the bolt from the
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  external cyclic loads, preventing the stress cycles
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  that would otherwise lead to fatigue failure.
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  It's an essential protective layer, but you have to get it
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  right because fasteners relax over time.
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  So if we step back and look at these three pillars, DFM and a
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  classification and production planning, we see that
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  profitability in manufacturing is well, it's a perfectly
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  connected loop. It absolutely is.
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  Aggressive design through DFM and a needs the organized
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  information from classification and group technology.
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  That rigorous data then enables effective planning through
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  systems like MRP and JIT. And all that precision planning
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  lets you use advanced manufacturing processes to their
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  full potential. It's a closed system.
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  Data drives design, design drives execution.
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  And this is where it gets really interesting.
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  I think we move beyond the machines to the human element
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  because these complex systems rely entirely on high
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  performance teams. Engineering, manufacturing,
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  purchasing, quality, all working together.
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  The team SuccessFactors are just as important as the UMC.
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  And the research points to 1 surprisingly simple but
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  profoundly impactful factor Co location.
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  Just putting everyone in the same room.
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  Or at least in the same facility.
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  Having those multifunctional team members in a common space
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  significantly imroves communication, boosts morale and
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  ensures roblems get caught early.
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  And the reason is simle it's the benefit of bumping into people.
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  The unplanned conversation in the hallway.
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  That's it. That organic interaction reminds
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  someone of an issue or a design conflict that otherwise would
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  have waited for a formal scheduled meeting, by which time
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  it's already a bigger problem. It's the lubricant for the whole
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  system. That makes perfect sense.
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  So as you, the listener, look at the immense complexity of
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  setting up a coding system, the E trees and N trees for physical
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  products, it raises a powerful question for all of us, no
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  matter what our field is. What process in your own work
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  could be digital asset management?
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  Handling customer requests? Internal docs?
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  What could be made vastly more efficient, higher quality, and
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  less costly if you just applied that same engineering rigor and
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  standardized your own internal classification system?
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  Today, think about that framework of structure and
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  discipline. Until next time, keep diving
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  deep.