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The concepts of design for manufacture (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) are becoming well known. These ideas focus on reducing costs by making products easier to produce. But these concepts are not sufficient. Products must also be designed so the customer can be delighted with availability, responsiveness, and flexibility to the marketplace dynamics. A product that doesn't allow a company to delight the customer with delivery when needed is worthless, no matter how easy it is to produce. I call this facet of design to delight the customer with products when needed design for logistics (DFL). It is one aspect of the product that few designers consider, but it is one of the most important for a successful product.
EVERY MANUFACTURER'S MISSION
A manufacturer's mission is to buy the right materials at the right time, process them effectively in the plant, and deliver quality products to customers when needed. Utopia is a smooth flow of the right materials entering the plant at the right time, immediately being transformed in the plant, and flowing smoothly out to customers when needed.
Inventories will be miniscule with our utopian scenario, throughput times very short (hence making the operation flexible to customer demands), productive assets will be used as effectively as possible (making exactly the right amount of the right things customers are buying), and overhead costs will be minimum (few disturbances requiring people to react and few custodians of inventory). Quality will also be outstanding, a forced condition in order to arrive at the utopian product flow.
I call this process of continuous product flow "logistics." Excellent business logistics is a key to becoming a world-class competitor. Many factors internal and external to the plant must be correct to achieve a utopian logistics condition. Quick machine changeovers and better floor layout are obviously needed. Relationships with vendors, in particular, must be carefully arranged. These are the areas of improvement encompassed in the just-in-time (JIT) philosophy, the operations side of the business.
The other factors needed to achieve utopia are not so obvious and have not received adequate attention. As stated earlier, how a product is designed can make achieving excellent logistics easy or impossible. It is this facet of change that is the focal point of...