Have you been considering a design for supply chain? If you’ve been involved in manufacturing anything in recent history, you know the feeling. Customer orders piling up, lines are down, and you’re just learning that components won’t be available for weeks, maybe even months, because of supply chain issues. That low-cost custom part could now hold up tens of thousands of finished good production units or even millions of dollars if it’s part of an Aerospace or Defense contract.
Could this have been avoided? Supply chains are still a hot topic. With so much focus on correctly planning demand, having alternate suppliers, and JIT inventory is becoming a thing of the past. Another area of focus, however, is available to ease supply chain bottlenecks that continues to supply cost-effective, on-time products.
The Design for Excellence (DFX) approach optimizes a product design to reduce total cost, increase manufacturing efficiency, and provide a better customer experience. It combines several modules, including Design for Manufacturing (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), and Design for Sustainability (DFS). With the onset of recent pervasive supply chain issues, the newest component to this approach is design for supply chain (DfSC).
What is Design for Supply Chain?
DfSC brings together a range of disciplines, including engineering, operations research, economics, business intelligence, process optimization, and data science. It uses a combination of data-driven analysis and collaborative decision-making between stakeholders. Typical stakeholders include suppliers, customers, logistics providers, manufacturers, and other partners in the value chain. This is to ensure all materials are available when needed, transportation costs are optimized, and inventory levels are set appropriately.
This collaborative decision-making involves reviewing each component and considering the following:
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- Is the component on the product development’s critical path, and what is the overall project impact?
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- Are standard parts available at or near the same quality and functionality?
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- Can multiple common components be assembled to create a custom design feature?
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- Would pre-assembling components at the supplier accelerate the process or cause additional supply chain complications?
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- Are there multiple qualified and approved sources available for each material?
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- Are there time/cost tradeoffs to be had between domestic and global suppliers?
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- What are the costs/benefits of implementing design changes vs. accepting expedited freight costs on the original design?
Examples of DfSC Application
The questions above can be applied anywhere along the process when an impact to the supply chain is identified. For more context, here are some examples of this process being applied during development at Nortech Systems.
Due to supply chain issues, a custom filter connector would not be available for several months. Their experienced team reviewed the design and identified a standard connector and filtered adaptor that, when combined, would meet functionality and space constraints. After a temporary change was received from the customer, production lines could continue until the original component was available again.
A similar situation arose with a 19 Conductor 22 AWG cable design. As specified by the customer, the lead time ranged between 6 – 9 months and would impact a downstream order on the customer’s end. The team reviewed each material and specification detailed in the original design and found an alternate cable, readily available, that met 80-85% of the requirements as specified. The alternate was suggested to the customer. They ended up doing their own analysis and determined it was an acceptable alternative.
Having an experienced team who analyzes the design for alternatives is crucial. Get a reliable team on your side, like Nortech. We are aware of current conditions or arising situations with material suppliers and can identify potential supply chain hotspots before they occur.
What Are the Advantages?
By creating greater visibility into all aspects of the supply chain, potential issues can be identified quickly and addressed before they become significant. However, capturing and quantifying the advantages of these DfSC methodologies then becomes quite challenging. This proactive approach avoids potential issues before they become major, costly, and measurable problems. That doesn’t mean a cost/benefit can’t be assigned to the work, but it may take more for it to be appreciated.
The benefits of applying these methods after a product is released for production can be quantified. If supply chain issues arise, you will see results in terms of time and dollars that were discussed in the application examples.
Analyze Your Design With the Experts
The real advantage of design for supply chian comes from working with experts in the cable, PCBA, and interconnect fields. Nortech Systems’ vast array of experienced engineers, technicians, project managers, supply chain managers, demand planners, and inventory control specialists focus their trained eyes on your project. From design to the manufacturing process and supply chain, Nortech works hard to predict and prevent supply chain issues.
By understanding your application, we can recommend more straightforward and cost-effective solutions. These recommendations will help you balance risk mitigation and cost. The Nortech team understands wire and cable better than anyone. Our specialists allow you to focus on your application and leave the tail-end interconnectors to the experts.
Design for supply chain considers the complete life cycle of an engineered product from concept through delivery. It recognizes that modern supply chains demand products created with a broad range of stakeholders in mind. In effect, DfSC enables you to consider not only how a product is designed and assembled but also how it is manufactured, shipped, stored, maintained, refurbished, and recycled/reused when it reaches obsolescence. This includes achieving budgetary targets. Although the effects of the pandemic on the supply chain are slowly receding, domestic and global labor shortages are not and will continue to affect material availability.
Contact the experts at Nortech Systems and add DfSC analysis to your product development and production plans today!