Fastening, Joining & Assembly

Been through a couple of DFA courses and they are a wonderful tool.

Soon after the training, we were quoting against international "best practice" suppliers. We reviewed proposed designs, commonised parts, reduced component count (and thus tooling cost) reduced fastener counts and won the contract.

That job got our foot in the door for a customer group that became 40% of our turnover for some years.

I only wish that the structured approach had remained in place. Management movements, and other structural adjustments mean that this rigorous approach that we used then is now only supported by a few of us that remain.

It's amazing to see the "youngsters" response when you project back to them a replacement design with 30% fewer parts using less material and less labour to assemble.

Those tools don't get forgotten, but do get diluted with time. (Unless there are strong systems there to sustain them.)

Nothing is as it was.

Our turn over is about average for our industry but it is still high. and every time a new set of Engineers come on board there seams to be a power grab. I takes about 3-6 months for them to settle in and realize that what they want to change and the changes they want to make have already been tried and shot down. Only the very exceptional can make the jump.

I think that if a new engineer would set back and incorporate the existing with the new it would not take as long to make a team.