Ensure your product is designed for manufacture

Design for manufacturing, also known as DFM, is the process of ensuring the product is appropriately designed to suit the manufacturing process. Often, early prototypes do not include details for mass production until the appropriate stage of further development is part refined and optimised for manufacture.

Some prototypes and early industrial designs may look great, but it is crucial to consider the design for manufacture at an early stage.

An important thing to consider is manufacturing volumes. This can massively dictate the final manufacturing method of the components. If the volumes are low then a simple cost-effective manufacturing method would suffice, but if you plan to make thousands of the new product, then other methods such as injection moulding may be a better choice. Here your investment in tooling is high, but the price of the components is very low.