Restrictive and Opportunistic Method in Design for Manufacturing

The main objective of design for manufacturing (DfM) is to ensure and simplify the manufacturing of products and reduce manufacturing costs. The problem is, that it remains unclear, which challenges and difficulties are most frequently encountered when considering the manufacturing process during the design phase. Only few studies have objectively investigated the influence of a restrictive method on the design results. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of restrictive method on manufacturability and the manufacturing effort of the design outcome for design engineers and students. Design engineers as well as students designed and selected concepts with a high manufacturing effort. Successful approaches were those, which designed concepts completely without welding joints by cleverly redesigning the design and still fulfil the function. Hence, we present successful approaches as an opportunistic method in DfM, which can be transferred to further manufacturing processes.