Design For Manufacturing Principles Research Articles

Proposal and evaluation of a selection procedure for cast parts

The design of casting components is a complex activity, which is usually based on guidelines scattered in the literature, or based on the designer’s accumulated experience. A single failure in the casting process selection can increase design and production time and, in critical cases, result in a collapse of the manufacturing and assembly of components. Nowadays the selection is made by prioritizing the features of the casting process, but this action could be carried out during the product development stage, assisting the designer. This could allow the project to adjust to a more viable casting process. In this context, our goal is to propose a selector for casting processes to be used during the early stages of the embodiment design. It was achieved through the use of quality function deployment and design for manufacturing (DFM) principles. Our proposal relates the component’s main functions with each process characteristic (mass, minimum section thickness, draft angle, surface finish, dimensional tolerances, minimum lot and lead time) through a correlation matrix, resulting in importance indexes for these characteristics. Furthermore, the importance indices obtained are related to the capability of each casting process discussed, providing a process rating. A checklist based on DFM principles is also provided to guide the designer when a need for improvement is observed or no processes are suited for producing the desired part. For validation, two ferrous and two nonferrous cast parts were analyzed. The results were compared with other selectors described in the literature and with processes actually used in the industry. Thus, they have shown a good relation with the other methods, especially regarding the quantitative classification determined by the proposed selector.

Material selection in the design of electrical connectors

The function and service requirements of an electrical connector for mobile telephones are detailed. Current electrical contact design methodology is critically analysed and weaknesses identified. The role of finite element analysis (FEA) and design for manufacture principles in the design process is also included. Material selection is identified as a key parameter for successful design. The suitability of various materials, particularly copper alloys, is discussed. The development of a material database to aid the designer is outlined. The ease and speed with which the designer can use the software to extract information on design variables, material property data and company strip metal specifications is highlighted.

Design for semiconductor manufacturing. Perspective

The semiconductor industry is challenged to sustain the historical rate of exponential growth in product innovation and productivity for as long into the future as possible. If this challenge is to be met, substantial investments in chip-design automation are required to improve design capabilities and to narrow the widening gap between projected increases in device complexity and design productivity. Design for manufacture (DFM) is one potential means to leverage the required investment in design automation. DFM focuses on understanding how the design of a product interacts with the various processes and facilities available to make that product, in order to conceive and refine design alternatives that tend to optimize the product in the context of existing or projected manufacturing capabilities. In this paper, we review the current literature on DFM as applied in other industries and consider the relevance of state-of-the-art DFM principles and tools to improved efficiency and productivity within the semiconductor industry. We observe that, overall, many of the organizational structures for implementing DFM already exist within semiconductor firms and the industry more broadly. Moreover, much of the existing spectrum of layout, modeling, simulation, and analysis tools used for semiconductor device, process, equipment, and factory design can be thought of as components of a de facto system of design for semiconductor manufacturing (DFSM). While recent work aimed specifically at DFSM shows great promise, advances in the development of component design tools are lagging and integration of these tools into a coherent system for DFSM is only emerging. Systems integration of tools which characterize future processes and technologies will be needed in order to posit design rules which are sufficiently robust to allow their incorporation in industry-standard automated design and layout tools. The implications are that there is a need for accelerated improvements in DFSM tools and integration if historical semiconductor productivity growth is to be sustained.

A four ASIC MCM-C, design for manufacturability and the next generation silicon

A ceramic MCM was designed and put into volume production. Four identical 15 mm square ASIC devices with 370 bond pads each are wirebonded into a four cavity, co-fired, alumina PGA containing 383 pins. All materials and processes were selected following the design for manufacturability principles in order to minimize risk and insure meeting schedule requirements. The results are smaller size, better electrical performance, and lower cost than four single chip CPGAs. >

Design for Manufacture: An Overview

Design for manufacture (DFM) is concerned with defining product design alternatives which facilitate optimization of the manufacturing system as a whole. Recognized as being essential to productivity improvement, interest in the DFM approach has risen dramatically as the result of recent experience with deployment of advanced manufacturing technology. This article critically examines the broad range of activities which are embodied in the DFM approach. Discussion is divided into consideration of DFM principles and rules, quantitative evaluation methodologies, and computer-aided DFM. Underlying organization issues are also discussed.