Design for Manufacturability: How to Use Concurrent Engineering to Rapidly Develop Low-Cost, High-Quality Products for Lean Production shows how to use concurrent engineering teams to design products for all aspects of manufacturing with the lowest cost, the highest quality, and the quickest time to stable production. Extending the concepts of design for manufacturability to an advanced product development model, the book explains how to simultaneously make major improvements in all these product development goals, while enabling effective implementation of Lean Production and quality programs.

Illustrating how to make the most of lessons learned from previous projects, the book proposes numerous improvements to current product development practices, education, and management. It outlines effective procedures to standardize parts and materials, save time and money with off-the-shelf parts, and implement a standardization program. It also spells out how to work with the purchasing department early on to select parts and materials that maximize quality and availability while minimizing part lead-times and ensuring desired functionality.

• Describes how to design families of products for Lean Production, build-to-order, and mass customization
• Emphasizes the importance of quantifying all product and overhead costs and then provides easy ways to quantify total cost
• Details dozens of design guidelines for product design, including assembly, fastening, test, repair, and maintenance
• Presents numerous design guidelines for designing parts for manufacturability
• Shows how to design in quality and reliability with many quality guidelines and sections on mistake-proofing (poka-yoke)

Describing how to design parts for optimal manufacturability and compatibility with factory processes, the book provides a big picture perspective that emphasizes designing for the lowest total cost and time to stable production. After reading this book you will understand how to reduce total costs, ramp up quickly to volume production without delays or extra cost, and be able to scale up production rapidly so as not to limit growth.