Design for Manufacturability: How a change in thinking can add value and reduce lead time
At Counterpart, Inc. we work everyday to understand our customers, their products, and their bottle necks. As a consultative supplier, we can pull from over 27 years of experience as a contract manufacturer to evaluate existing products, understand pain points, and improve design to build a better supply chain for our customers. Recently, we took on the challenge of helping a customer redesign a motor mount to achieve exactly that.
The resulting design changes reduced cost by 25% and improved production lead time from 8 weeks to 2 weeks.
Existing Design:
- Four separate part numbers to create one assembly.
- Seven pieces of sheet metal and tube requiring four different machines and three different material SKUs.
- Twelve weld joints and a custom weld fixture to hold required tolerances.
- Reliant on multiple metal suppliers for all required materials.
Redesign Process:
Concept #1
- Counterpart, Inc. conducted several meetings with our customer’s design engineering and purchasing teams to understand the application, assembly requirements, performance requirements, and lead time demands.
- Using that feedback, we developed several options to present back to the customer with the goal of reducing complexity, improving lead time, and reducing cost.
- Concept #1 used one material type, two machines to produce, and reduced the weld time. Additionally, a weld fixture was no longer required.
- Feedback from our customer’s engineering team quickly determined that additional strength was needed and a “hinge” issue was found along the triangular mounting plate.
Concepts #2 & 3
- Using the strength requirements as our primary objective we created these next two options to assure a usable design.
- These concepts both reduced piece parts, complexity, and cost…all while improving lead times.
- Concept #2 eliminated welding, but still created a “hinge” issue along the triangular mounting plate similar to Concept #1.
- Concept #3 functioned as needed, but increased complexity.
- We still saw opportunity for improvement and went back to the drawing board one last time with the goal of finding a solution closer to Concept #1.
Final Concept
- As a final design, we were able to pull in all of the advantages of Concept #1 and meet the strength characteristcs of Concepts #2 & 3. This final desgn accomplished:
- Single piece of sheet metal
- Mounting holes changed to slots
- 2 of the 3 mounting slots moved to side flanges to eliminate hinging on the mounting forms.
- 100% of the welding removed
- Increased velocity of production (reduced lead time)
- Simplified design for improved quality
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Let’s see how Counterpart, Inc can improve your supply chain! CONTACT US TODAY! Click Here and fill out the form to send us an email. OR call us at 605-692-5952.