Why is Design for manufacturing (DFM) important
2022-08-24
Most of quality issue during manufacturing is due to the design omission. Design for manufacturing and address the problem as early as in the design stage is the key step to promote product design quality.
It is widely believed that design decides everything, which leads to bad design for manufacturing. We must fully understand the importance of design for manufacturing (DFM), then we could improve our NPI (new product introduction) capability.
To shorten the new product development cycle
Nowadays, the fast upgrading of electronic products is challenging the development of product, training of professional persons and transfer of process know-how.
DFM (design for manufacturing) is a good practice of concurrent engineering methodology. By introducing DFM into every process, the errors could be found out and fixed the first time, thus reducing prototyping/trial-producing times and speeding to the market.
To identify and solve manufacturing problems
Traditionally, PCB design is separate from manufacturing, and it is regarded that design decides manufacturing, which could probably increase the technology difficulty, increase processes, cause soldering/assembling defects and increase manufacturing cost.
IPC research shows that 80% of manufacturing defects could be identified / improved well before the tooling. By introducing DFM methodology, manufacturing defects could be predicted at the design stage. These defects then could be verified and fixed before manufacturing starts instead of during manufacturing, thus increasing 1st pass yield and greatly reducing manufacturing cost.
To improve product reliability
The electronics applied in medical industry, automobile industry, military industry, aerospace industry, etc., focus much on the high reliability. For consumer electronics, the stability of product quality, to a large extent, also impacts brand reputation and customer loyalty.
It is known that the soldering quality determines the reliability and life cycle of PCBA. By introducing DFM, the soldering points could be comprehensively inspected and improved, thus to ensure the soldering quality.
As DFM attracts more and more attention, the DFM solution also becomes the focus to best practice of design for manufacturing methodology.
The early DFM solution is by manual checking with magnifying glass. As the development of technology and requirement of shorter time to market, the traditional DFM approach lost its place and is replaced with more intelligent software tool.
Nowadays, there are lots of DFM software, such as valor DFM by Siemens, DFMPro, DFM Expert by Vayo Technology and so on. These DFM software has help make the DFM/DFA analysis process more intelligent and efficient. For Example, VayoPro-DFM Expert comes with 3D component entity library, which could simulate assembled PCB. Then with thousands of checking rules (bare board and assembly), the software could check and analyze every detail (component, trace, via, silk screen, etc.) of the PCBA, thus to find out the design omission or manufacturing defects at the first time. Besides, its innovative 3D DFM/DFA analysis report not only displays the defects, but also could ease the communication effort between different department.
Reach out to us for more information about DFM solution.
