The “Distinguished DFMA Supporter of the Year” award, offered annually at the Boothroyd Dewhurst International Forum on Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA®), was given this year to Fred Johnson, senior technical cost engineer at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics.
The 2017 Forum was held in Providence, RI, June 6-7, and is the foremost conference worldwide on DFMA methodologies and software for product simplification and early costing. This year’s theme, “Designing Difference,” served to highlight how DFMA-integrated teams distinguish their products and organizations through data-driven decisions and subsequent collaboration.
“Our DFMA Supporter of the Year award acknowledges people and teams that work together in exceptional ways to improve products and educate others in industry,” said John Gilligan, president of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc. “Fred Johnson and his colleagues moved quickly in the space of only 18 months to redesign and cost-out some 33 projects—identifying and capturing a potential 32.7 million dollars in lifetime savings. This is a remarkable achievement, particularly in that these are low-volume products where cost reduction steps are not amplified by high production counts.”
Further illustrating the power of teamwork and use of DFMA, Kohler Company engineers Bill Devenish, Ben Marotz, Stephanie Freier, Matthieu Da Rocha and Adam Guenther hosted a panel discussion at the Forum titled “The Bold Look of DFMA at Kohler.” The company has succeeded in establishing a strong implementation path across disciplines and product categories that enhances their existing Lean and new product development efforts. The Kohler team reported excellent cost and performance benchmarks.
Dell EMC, Raytheon and Dynisco also addressed DFMA integration across the disciplines of management, manufacturing, design, test and service, which are sometimes called Design for eXcellence (DFX). DFMA is complementary to DFX and they are often undertaken as a whole to ensure that requirements by all stakeholders in an organization are efficiently met.
Rounding out the Forum were presentations by Dymotek and the University of Dayton.
“Each year we encourage presentations on manufacturing processes that help companies reach their part-consolidation goals,” said Nick Dewhurst, executive vice president of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc. “Simplifying a product with multi-functional single parts is still the best way to lower costs and increase quality and profits.”
DFMA® is a registered trademark of Boothroyd Dewhurst, Inc.
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