Mar 182014
If you are in the New York area and interested in product profit, you should attend the DFM Summit which is THIS THURSDAY MARCH 20? The event includes sessions on distributed manufacturing, Design-to-Cost, Industrial Design, and networking.
Design-to-Cost Panel
The design-to-cost panel will include the following panelists:
- Jon Hirschtick is the founder and Chairman of Onshape, developing new not-yet-announced products for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market. Previously he founded and led SolidWorks.
- Jon Washington is the founder of The Innovation Garage, a business innovation firm that partners with its clients in the design of product, process, service, and supply chain solutions.
- Ben Gebhardt is a co-founder of Refactory, making hardware easy. He was the lead electrical engineer on the Beats By Dre team for all of 2012 until spring 2013.
- Eric Arno Hiller is the principal of Hiller Associates and one of the pioneers in Product Cost Management (PCM). Hiller co-founded technology companies aPriori and End Around.
To read more about the panelists and the subjects to be covered read Designers need to be responsible for cost by conference organizer Peter Verkooijen.
Hope to see you there!
Register Here for the DFM Summit.
26 Responses to “DFM Summit with Design-to-Cost Panel Thursday March 20!”
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John Hollmann, Owner: Validation Estimating LLC, Top Contributor SAYS:
Eric,
This truism applies to project cost as well. Studies show that Construction costs are largely dependent upon what happens in early design, and particularly the interaction of engineering and suppliers. Rich Plumery has a great paper on this coming at the AACE New Orleans conference. I know Mr. Whiteside has published on the correlation of engineering cost and construction costs. People that think they should focus their project control on construction because that is where the money is have it backwards.
It depends on your industry. IN AEC, project cost is a huge cost, but in discrete manufacturing it can be de minimus (e.g. 2-5%). Obviously, they watch it (in fact, they obsess on it too much), but it is not driving the bottom line.
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George Spiller
owner at Design for Profit Inc
The business plan that funded the project will only succeed if the total funded design cost can realistically achieve the customer satisfaction target embedded in the plan. Within those confines the designers like all team members are responsible for achieving the task that
pays their salaries. Yes that means that that more that usual talent is needed for success to occur.
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Thomas J. Hornyak, Seeking New Manufacturing/Process Engineer Opportunities, SAYS
The need for speed in responding to customer requirements is the pain which drives the effort. Too many times there is little if any communication between the design group and the folks in manufacturing. Designers are creators and although the design will perform as it has been said the devil is in the detail; Tolerance, tolerance stack up, vs. form – fit – function.
The Project Manager is really the person who has to get the cross functional team cooperating and working concurrently on the project. Where the manager has to keep the project;
– on specification
– on schedule
– in budget
I think a marvelous example of this is Bill Gates and Paul Allen founders of the home grown startup Microsoft. They developed a 64K program called DOS and it would boot up a computer. Today you are lucky if you can get software in a capacity 500mb or much larger. Storage got very cheap so software has gotten sloppy.
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Anthony Schnellbeck, Systems Engineer (Aeronautical), Consultant SAYS:
Hello Eric,
I assume that “designers” is meant in a broad sense, covering marketing and product development for consumer products, and systems engineers in defence, aerospace and similar industries.
In the latter case, I have come to believe that Design to Cost should be a systems engineering responsibility as much of the final cost is driven by the initial requirements even before design begins. Systems engineers are best placed to perform the sensitivity and trade studies needed to develop a set of requirements that allow a cost target to be achieved.
Anthony
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Charles Halligan Independent Aviation & Aerospace Professional SAYS:
Design To Cost (DTC) is a Systems Engineering lead as part of the design team. DTC costs should be assigned a percentage of total design estimates and cost targets developed for each functional item and the follow on physical design effort. The DTC budget must be followed from the first conceptual design and architectural assignments to the ongoing product design. It is a team effort and continues far into the product design life cycle.
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Vijay Trehan, Seeking a Systems/Hardware/Test Engineer Job SAYS
I agree as product cost and how long the product lifecycle is quite important.
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Magnus Pettersson, Project Manager Officer at HIAB,
A well known fact that still isn’t highlighted enough, I think most people involved in product development acknowledge this, and still it’s not highlighted enough.
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Richard Lindström, VP Technology and Implementation at eBOM AB SAYS:
What action do your team take, to control cost?
1) We estimate, until we see what the pre series cost us
x) We know the cost from real quotes, before we have finalized the drawings for the prototype
2) We try to take care of cost early by system design
I have used all three methods above over the years.
The first (1) method is the most common, and I guess it’s motivates the “designers must be responsible for cost”…
Second (x) is the most time consuming, but also the best method to control cost. Requires a PLM system and discipline to do all the work with CBOM’s and pareto diagrams etc.
Third (2!) is the 20% vs. 80% way. System design can cut cost a great deal. This is a very powerful method. I have had great success running modular design combined with set based design. This way we can make good compromises between performance, cost and time-to-market. 🙂
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Julio Contreras, Lead Estimator at Fluor, SAYS:
I total agree with Eric, I consider that the time to save money is during Design, if the designer doesnot about cost estimation, it is the oportunit to incorporate a cost estmator to the Project.
Sadly, there is rarely enough of the cost experts to go around.
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jewel cameron, Construction & Q S , PM at CBRE, SAYS:
I think that the designer should involved a cost estimator or quantity surveyor in the preliminary stage of any project design.
Jewel C Cameron MQSi MWOBO.
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Hwagyu James Kim, Mechanical Engineer, SAYS:
That’s right. Designing is not just to getting geometry of products. It also includes the selection of the manufacturing process.
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Michael Gaunce, Senior Design Engineer at DocMagnet Inc, SAYS:
Great article. I can imagine the difficulties of implementing this at a large scale. At a smaller scale company where the manufacture of a product is often either supervised or managed by the designer of that same product I think the ideas in this article is much more intuitive.
In my experience with product design, it is a process of balancing priorities. Those priorities can be widely ranging, including cost, simplicity, functionality, performance, and ease of assembly.
It makes me appreciate working at a smaller firm where the designer plays an integral role in all aspects of the manufacturing process. Especially when a lot of the designs are prototypes and we have to find a way to produce the design in the most cost and time effective way while still supplying a quality product!
Once again, great article. I think it brought up vital considerations in an effort to improve efficiency in the manufacture process, especially with trending improvements in green manufacturing.
Michael,
Thank you for your interest in the article (although, I did not write it, just was quoted in it). I agree that in small companies, people have a greater breadth of responsibility and tend to have to take cost seriously.
It is shocking how different it is in a bigger company. – Eric Hiller
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Michael Gaunce, Vice President of Engineering at DocMagnet Inc SAYS:
Great article. I can imagine the difficulties of implementing this at a large scale. At a smaller scale company where the manufacture of a product is often either supervised or managed by the designer of that same product I think the ideas in this article is much more intuitive.
In my experience with product design, it is a process of balancing priorities. Those priorities can be widely ranging, including cost, simplicity, functionality, performance, and ease of assembly.
It makes me appreciate working at a smaller firm where the designer plays an integral role in all aspects of the manufacturing process. Especially when a lot of the designs are prototypes and we have to find a way to produce the design in the most cost and time effective way while still supplying a quality product!
Once again, great article. I think it brought up vital considerations in an effort to improve efficiency in the manufacture process, especially with trending improvements in green manufacturing.
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Amitabh Misra, independent engineering consultant, SAYS:
Good and valid things have been put into the article.In the competitive world,the best and reliable product at reasonable cost will only give it’s value for money.Thorough value engineering should be practised before launch of a product and testing prototype is a good idea before launching a large scale product.
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John Pickering, Owner, JBC Metalworks, Specializing in Mechanical Engineering Solutions, DFM, Precision Machining, Sub-Assembly/Testing SAYS:
This is no doubt a valid topic, but in reality it’s often a double edged sword. I’ve seen many cases where the end product or manufacturing objective suffers because the design process is confined by a fixed price point. While working backwards against the cost restrictions inferior components, processes and weak design fundamentals often undermine the objective itself.
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Mark Bresin
Independent Telecommunications Professional
To make the statement that Designers need to be responsible for cost is being rather shortsighted when evaluating the total team that contributes to many phases of a new product that result in cost issues. Sure, the designer has a very important role in product development and the components/parts that are designed should be created with the understanding of materials, processes and best manufacturing techniques that meet the requirements of the product specifications. Yes, an experienced designer can anticipate general costing of parts and the associated costs that will show up as another line item like the Tooling required to make the part. I also agree to many statements in the article and fully promote the team efforts in many of the companies to blend personnel into other disciplines—–such as Design Engineers into Sourcing which bridges many gaps to enhance communications with suppliers—–and if used effectively will also drive cost reduction efforts. We must also understand the product cost of scale and/or shedule—-Is your product requirement 10 units or 10 million ? Is it a 3 month or 3 year schedule to ship ? Does your product have any New Technologies that are not matured and are only offered by few suppliers ? Are certain materials specified that are Long Lead items and/or only supplied by companies that have poor ratings ? My point is that there are numerous key elements that drive cost—–So why put the cost burden ONLY on the Designer !!
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Craig White, Product Development Manager at Nyko Technologies SAYS:
this is very true. i always work with designers early on in the process, to guide design toward a manufacturable, cost effective solution that provides the desired product features
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Tom Hadley, Senior Consultant & Trainer at The Project Management Workshop, SAYS
Yes, however in the Heavy Engineering industry certainly the cost or methods of fabrication and construction are not taken into account.
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Kumudu Samarasekera, Experienced R&D professional in New Product Innovation, Learning & Development. Seeking new opportunites. SAYS:
Totally agree. When I was designing, at an extremely early stage it was important that we had done sufficient homework to arrive at a cost range within which we can work with. Pretty important to work with Supply Chain, procurement and Brand building from the beginning to keep the design cost effective.
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Mauricio Castro, Design for Manufacturing Analysis/Training & PCB Design Services, SAYS
Great article
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Denis Secher, Global Component Engineering Design Support Manager chez Sanmina-SCI,
I like your article and could not more agree with you on the importance of cross-functional collaboration…
Denis,
Thank you for the interest. This is not my article (I was interviewed for it). If you are interested in Product Cost Management, you may enjoy also perusing my blog. http://www.productprofitandrisk.com/ Most of my articles focus on product cost.
Eric Hiller
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Matthew Turner, Procurement & Supply Chain CSR Expert SAYS:
Good points, well made. As is often the case, success comes where investment is made in technical skills, tools (software) and building relationships – without these you hit serious pain. I know books are a bit last century, but “Proactive Purchasing in the Supply Chain” (Burt, Petcavage & Pinkerton) is a good starting point for Procurement view.