Ensuring your design for the manufacturing process runs efficiently to give you the most accurate and timely production is an essential component of engineering. Maximizing your Design for Manufacturing profitability is the best way to streamline production and boost your bottom line.
Every manufacturer has had nightmares about bad parts.
It starts with a product defect that halts production, only that “product defect” is actually because of a design error.
That puts the entire project in jeopardy.
The journey from brilliant concepts to successful products is filled with challenges.
At Impact Fab, our Design for Manufacturing (DFM) approach has become our defining differentiator, creating value for our partners across industries.
While it’s not an entirely new concept, our approach differs slightly. We don’t just take a design and build it to spec. We work with our partners from the get-go, making something that’s not just easy to manufacture, but is completely focused on its end use within the final product.
The result? Well, we’ve used it to go from a garage-project in 1994 to a 7-figure business serving leading manufacturers in West Michigan. Here’s how you can leverage our DFM process.
What is Design for Manufacturing?
Most of the time, product development focuses on optimizing the design of an idea and enhancing its manufacturability. Its main goal is to create products that are not only functional and practical, but can also be produced in a large-scale, cost-effective operation.
Bridging the Manufacturing Gap: A Costly Reality
When engineering teams work in isolation from manufacturing expertise, the results are predictable yet consistently underestimated:
- Costly Late-Stage Revisions – What might be a simple CAD adjustment early in the process can become a six-figure mistake later.
- Extended Time-to-Market – Manufacturing delays can be costly. Every week lost to design revisions is a week your competitors gain.
- Quality Inconsistencies – Rushed designs often result in quality variability, leading to higher rejection rates and customer dissatisfaction.
- Supply Chain Complications – Recent tariff volatility, geopolitical issues offshore, and labor shortages continue to destabilize the global supply chain.
Reduced Profit Margins – The uncertainty raised by the earlier issues, coupled with rising freight and shipping expenses, make profit projections impossible to calculate.
Our Integrated Approach to DFM
Our approach to DFM isn’t merely about “checking” designs against manufacturing guidelines—it’s about working with our partners to understand how they work in the final product.
This is what allows us to deliver on time, on spec — and with the confidence that there will be fewer redesigns or recalls. Our process bridges the gap between engineering vision and manufacturing reality through:
Manufacturing Input from Day One
Rather than treating manufacturing as a downstream consideration, we bring production engineers into the initial ideation sessions, ensuring manufacturable thinking from the start.
Material Selection Optimization
We evaluate materials, not just for performance characteristics, but for their processing requirements, availability, and cost stability.
Real Results That Matter
Here are some of our most recent project highlights:
- Lowering the cost of a large frame for Dematic by at least $2000 per unit.
- 50% reduction in development time for Plascore and their heat form fixtures used in jet engine nacelles.
- Allowed Landscape Forms the flexibility to produce a large order of parts for their city bench project in New York in a very short time frame.
Unlock Your Manufacturing Potential with DFM
The difference between good design and great products isn’t just a solid methodology like DFM. It starts and ends with the relationships we have with our partners, and working as an extension of their team.
That’s why our integrated DFM approach ensures that there are fewer reworks so that brilliant concepts can become brilliant products.
If you’re struggling with late-stage revisions, extended time-to-market, and quality inconsistencies, we highly encourage you to implement your own version of our DFM process. And if you have any questions, please get in touch or connect with us on LinkedIn.