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By Dr. David M. Anderson, P.E., fASME, CMC; www.design4manufacturability.com
Tentative baseline list of topics to be covered:
THE PROGRAM. The program consists of a day and half seminar on Integrated Product Development for engineers (and everyone who works on product development teams) preceded by a four-hour Management Session on "Product Development Strategy" to ensure that the Integrated Product Development methodologies taught to the engineers will be supported and encouraged from the top for maximum effectiveness.
The Management Session. The four-hour interactive Management Session is for the CEO/GM, all VPs, senior managers, program managers, and project leaders. This covers what management needs to do to raise product development effectiveness to the highest level and support what will be taught to the engineers in the Seminar. It will present management strategies and policies that support optimal product development such as ensuring the availability of adequate resources to form complete multifunctional teams early, thorough up-front work, (applying lessons learned, raising/revolving issues, optimizing the architecture, developing manufacturing, quality, and supply chain strategies), making the transition from the typical back-loaded to front-loaded project loading, how to cut time-to-market in half, how to greatly lower total cost (and how not to) based on Dr. Anderson's book-length web-site, http://www.halfcostproducts.com, and using metrics based on total cost and the time to stable production. Between sessions Dr. Anderson will be available to interact with managers during a working lunch.
The Product Development Seminar. The first four hours will review what was presented to management, or if the Management Session is not selected, this session will cover high-level topics with managers encourage to attend . The next four hours will show how to develop manufacturable products in multifunctional concurrent engineering teams. The next four hours will show how to design products for manufacturability starting with optimizing the critical concept/architecture phase. The final four hours will cover part design with dozens of DFM guidelines, designing for quality/reliability, and standardization. The audience for this session should include all design engineers, all manufacturing engineers, project leaders, key people from operations, supply chain management, and key managers and executives for the first four hours if the separate Management Session is not selected. The Seminar can accommodate up to 60 people, not counting managers and executives.
TOPICS. The training will emphasize how to significantly lower all costs, based on the principles of Dr. Anderson’s book-length website, www.HalfCostProducts.com, by simplifying concepts, optimizing product platform architecture, minimizing labor content, choosing the lowest-cost standard parts which minimizes material overhead, optimizing the utilization of off-the-shelf parts, optimizing supply chain management, eliminating the costs of quality by design, concurrently developing optimal product families and processing, eliminating costly steps such as calibration and tweaking, minimizing issues with tolerance stacks, and, in general, designing for every aspect of manufacturability.
The seminar will show how to use concurrent engineering product development teams to design in manufacturability from the beginning and how this will dramatically reduce the real time-to-market by ensuring the product works “out of the chute” and eliminating late changes to make the design manufacturable and ramp up to target the volume, productivity, and quality. These manufacturable designs will allow growth without encountering the “show stoppers” that occur when unmanufacturable products can only be built by highly skilled people and lots of firefighting. The principles and importance of standardization will be emphasized with special attention to minimizing total cost through the standardization of parts and raw materials, which could greatly simplify operations and supply chain management. Special attention will be given to the standardization of expensive parts, which can result in a lower total cost for the company.
Optional topics include designing products for lean production, high-mix/low-volume environments, build-to-order, and mass customization. Overviews can be included on product portfolio planning, product line rationalization, and how to manufacture on-demand without forecasts or inventory using Build-to-Order and Mass Customization, on which Dr. Anderson has written two books.
Dr. Anderson will work with the client’s people to pick topics and adapt the methodologies to suit the company and the audience to maximize the usefulness and impact of the training. Sometimes, he creates new methodologies and design guidelines for specific client situations. In addition to the usual Integrated Product Development topics, he does include, as appropriate, topics that help design teams design products to optimize supply chain management, reduce manufacturing lead time, standardize parts and materials, and improve manufacturing flexibility, efficiency customize products, and build products quickly to-order.
PREPARATION. Seminar preparation includes research to customize and prepare the seminar and very thorough handout originals (that the company would print and bind) which will be a very useful reference book for attendees. The handouts will be about 140 pages with a table of contents, but condensed into a quarter-inch thick booklet to encourage referrals later in offices and meetings. The handouts contain the words and graphics that will be on the slides along with reference material and information that will be discussed verbally, so attendees will not have to take notes. Thus, all attendees will be able to concentrate the subject matter and discussions. DFM books would only be needed for remote sites and anyone who missed the seminar.
Part of the preparation is an anonymous survey to be filled out by everyone involved in the product development process. Survey topics include: rating company products for manufacturability; good and bad products, sub-assemblies, and practices; consequences of bad manufacturability; hurdles to good product development; and opportunities. These comments will be presented before appropriate topics in the seminar. This, in itself, is a valuable deliverable, as it provides candid insights into the product development culture.
The seminar concludes with a class discussion in which attendees answer the question, “What happens next?” After several flip charts have been filled with attendees’ comments, the attendees vote their preferences. The prioritized list then becomes a good starting point for implementation. It is recommended to hold a half-day meeting the next day, open to all attendees and implementers, to start working on DFM implementation. Dr. Anderson could assist this effort with a half day of consulting after the seminar.
Dr. Anderson personally prepares and presents each seminar.
ACTION PLAN SESSION, where attendees discuss and answer the question, "What should happen next?" After several flip charts have been filled with attendees comments, the attendees vote their preferences.
This program provides great value because it offers training sessions for senior management on "Product Development Strategy" and then shows the engineers how to develop products for manufacturability using concurrent engineering. That makes this training is the most effective way to improve the product development process, shorten the real time-to-market, and significantly lower cost.
Facilitator: Dr. David M. Anderson, P.E., fASME CMC
1-805-924-0100; andersondm@aol.com
A very high-leverage option is the one-day product-specific workshop, which immediately applies the methodologies of the seminar to a specific product development project. The audience would be the newly formed project team. This is a effective way to get a new product development project "off on the right foot" and help the team optimize product architecture to design in manufacturability, low-cost, modularity, quality, and reliability.
The agenda would consist of a series of planned brainstorming sessions to encourage the team to explore many ways to implement the principles of the seminar (therefore the workshop should follow the seminar). These exercises themselves would be the start of many actual tasks, which would be continued after the workshop. Experience has shown that product development teams typically under-emphasize and miss opportunities related to the crucial early steps, like defining the product to meet the voice of the customer (QFD), really concurrently engineering the manufacturing processes, and optimizing product architecture, which, as the seminar will show, determines 60% of a products cumulative lifetime cost. As the seminar will also show, doing thorough up-front work is the key to cutting in half the time-to-market (as measured to time to ramped, stable production).
After one workshop at Hewlett-Packard, two team members asked the team leader if Dr. Anderson had worked for the competition (which he hadn’t) because his agenda was so thorough and useful.
The timing of product-specific workshops should be just as the team has formed and is about to start. If it is too early, there might not be enough focus, interest, or "critical mass." If it is too late, there may already be too many decisions already "cast in concrete" for creative optimization. Often, these workshops are held the day after the seminar while the material is fresh and enthusiasm is high. Alternatively, workshops can be scheduled whenever a new team is beginning a product development project.
Call or e-mail to discuss the possibilities:
Dr. David M. Anderson, P.E., fASME, CMC
Management Consultant
www.design4manufacturability.com
phone: 1-805-924-0100
fax: 1-805-924-0200
e-mail: andersondm@aol.com