AD&P; > September 2013 > FEATURE > Quality Tools: Digital & Physical
Quality tools:
Digital & Physical
Looking to boost the quality of your designs or on parts being
produced? Check out these developments.
Better Quality Through Design
When you think of Design for Assembly
(DFA) things like parts reduction and
the ability to simplify the assembly
process undoubtedly come to mind. And
Boothroyd Dewhurst (dfma.com), the
company that is essentially synonymous
with "Design for Manufacture and
Assembly" has released a new version
of its DFA product simplifcation
software, DFA 10, which does focus
on the reduction of parts count, on
creating "single, multifunctional
components with signifcantly improved
performance-to-cost ratios," according
to the company.
What's more, according to Dr. Geof
Boothroyd, co-founder of Boothroyd
Dewhurst, "Another of the principal
objectives of DFA 10 was to properly
incorporate years of research carried
out at University of Rhode Island on
the handling and assembly of large or
heavy parts—meaning those parts that
could not generally be reached and
manipulated by the assembly worker
u The DFA 10 software from Boothroyd
Dewhurst is not only benefcial for
designing assemblies to achieve improved
performance-to-cost ratios, but also
as regards better assembly quality due
to reducing the number of parts and
complexity of build in the product.
40
using one hand. This important work
is now incorporated into DFA 10 in
such a way that questions about part
orientation and symmetry that do not
afect the results have been eliminated
and replaced with automatically
incorporated research data."
are benefts such as reduced part count,
which potentially means everything from
reduced inventory to faster assembly
operations, there is the likelihood that
there is improved quality.
Which is to say that there is simplifcation of the approach to performing
the DFA analysis work.
Consider: Fewer parts, means fewer
possibilities for things to go wrong in
assembly. Designs that are predicated
on the ease of assembly means better
assembly.
There is another factor in all this that
shouldn't be overlooked. While there
Which means that DFA can also result
in DFQ.