December 2004
Better Product Designs Make U.S. Manufacturers More CompetitiveA new study by Nicholas Dewhurst and David Meeker finds that manufacturers can shave costs from the production process by redesigning products to reduce part counts and laborBy Karen M. Koenig
Dewhurst, the executive vice president of Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc., and Meeker, a consultant with Neoteric Product Development, propose that manufacturers can cut costs by redesigning products to reduce part count and cost. This savings would help level the advantage Asian countries have in terms of lower cost labor. U.S. manufacturers, however, must act soon in order to keep business home, Meeker says. The residential furniture industry, for example, has already lost thousands of jobs - and billions of dollars - to offshore manufacturing, particularly in the wood bedroom furniture sector. Last year, China shipped $1.16 billion in wooden bedroom furniture to the United States. It has since doubled its U.S. market share to 48 percent, since 2000. To find out what additional steps woodworkers should take to remain competitive domestically - and issues to be considered before moving to offshore manufacturing - Wood & Wood Products queried Meeker for his insight into the topic. For a copy of the study, visit www.dfma.com What our study in a nutshell says is threefold: 1) Understand your total cost - all facets - in as much detail as possible; 2) Applying a Design for Manufacture and Assembly approach to redesigning your product may yield significant savings so you don't need to go overseas; and 3) If you do decide to go overseas, make sure you understand all the costs associated with doing that.
DFMA is a systematic procedure that allows companies to understand and manage product costs from the earliest stages of the product's development. In an example from the aerospace market, when Airbus first entered the commercial market Boeing did analysis work to understand how Airbus was building its product. In the case of a passenger door, Airbus hogged the bulk of the assembly from a single billet of aluminum using a high-speed machining center, as opposed to building up the door frame from lots of parts and subassemblies. Consolidation of parts is one way to lower cost, along with using new processes and equipment to lower labor content. Many in the wood furniture industry are also turning to CNC machines to cut complex parts that in the past would have been made from several smaller pieces or by hand. What's to prevent offshore companies from redesigning products as well, making their products even less expensive than those manufactured domestically? As we point out at the end of the paper, nothing prevents you from sending the DFMA redesigned products overseas to be manufactured and nothing prevents offshore companies from doing the same.
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Better Product Designs Make U.S. Manufacturers More Competitive
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