1.1 OVERVIEW

• During design, we often focus on the final product, and not its manufacture.

• The Design For X (DFX) philosophy suggests that a design be continually reviewed from the start to the end to find ways to improve production and other non-functional aspects.

• These rules are nothing new, they are just common sense items written down, but they can be a good guide through the design process.

• Advantages of these techniques are,

- shorter production times

- fewer production steps

- smaller parts inventory

- more standardized parts

- simpler designs that are more likely to be robust

- they can help when expertise is not available, or as a way to reexamine traditional designs

- proven to be very successful over decades of application

• These techniques can be used as a very substantial part of concurrent engineering.

• Some of the DFX acronyms are, (modified from [Dodd, 1992])