Talk:Design for X

other tasks

 * The design for X guidelines are not pretty well alocated. There is another problem. Some design guidelines belong to different plc stages/phases.
 * It would be greatly welcome if design guidelines from a) other country related standardization boards are added, e.g. American Society of Civil Engineers, b) industry standard setter.

Regardless of the referenced article, the X does NOT stand for Excellence. That is purely a marketing term, born out of the Great Excellence Consultant Hoards of the 80s and 90s. Please stop propogating this ignorance. The X stands, as also stated in the referenced article as a mathmematical reference, ie; 'whatever' or a number of types of "Design for". I am removing this reference, if you disagree, discuss here. Ken (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Must agree with Ken. As CAX implies Computer Aided Everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_technologies not Computer Aided eXellence, DFX (OR DFx) is cut from the same cloth. One or two original concepts which are then extrapolated beyond credulity. As Tom and Ray Magliozzi joked, "We specialized in all cars, foreign and domestic." 71.222.52.149 (talk) 21:58, 13 July 2015 (UTC)  (Ex-Wikipedia contributor who visits every few years to remind myself why I stopped contributing.)

an article in Assembly magazine is hardly a reliable source.
 * I think you will need to come up with a citation for that other than the referenced article: which definitely does state that DFX means both design for excellence and design for "X". For example, do you have a citation to a reference that states that design for excellence is marketing drivel? Or is this just OR. — Dgtsyb (talk) 08:40, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

How about 30 years of doing DFX? call it OR if you wish, but the article cited is simply wrong. Ken (talk) 23:32, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Then you shouldn't have a problem providing a citation. — Dgtsyb (talk) 08:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * this are what is wrong with wikipedia....a single citation in Assembly magazine is hardly authoritative. Ken (talk) 15:01, 3 May 2012 (UTC)


 * So where is your more authoritative source? — Dgtsyb (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * We'll just have to leave it as is as i do not have the time to research this further and the misstatement appears to have been propagated almost to the ends of the known earth..... while I highly disagree with the x=excellent drivel, i choose to pick my battles myself and I will leave it for now. cheers Ken (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC).

This 'sentence' in the introduction is not actually a sentence: "In the "design for X", where X is a variable with many values." How about "The 'X' in "design for X" represents a variety of design targets." Elvisman113 (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Major Changes
DfX is a confusing topic itself. It is simply the bin for everything like many buzzwords around.


 * About the Chapter: "Design for X methodologies along the Product Life Cycle" and I propose that the DfX topic is not discussed in detail here, rather it just link to special design topics.
 * About the Chapter: "Design for X and other concepts of Product Development". From this perspective it is possible to describe how DfX methods are linked to other concepts under the roof of New Product Development.
 * Everything what is written about DFMA should be shifted to the corrosponding wikipedia site.

cheers Ulf

These links no longer work:
 * Design for X on the Better Product Design website

Deleted: Design for Manufacuring & Assembly
( to be shifted to Design for Assembly)

Within these design guidelines is a generic name for the members of a family of methodologies adopted to improve the project and conception of a product for a determined objective (as cost, assembly facility, repairing or other), of which Design for Manufacture is the oldest. The need for such "Design for ..." methodologies was identified as engineers became increasingly aware of a lack of appropriate detailed knowledge in important product life-cycle processes. Design for X (DFX) methodologies can be seen also as tools to analyse designs for their suitability for identified aspects of a product’s life cycle.

Of these, manufacturability and assemblability were among the first to have been considered, since both were highly apparent cost reduction drivers.

Similarly, following the example of Design for Assembly (DFA) and Design for Manufacture (DFM), other DFX methodologies have been proposed which consider alternative life-cycle values, assessing parameters like quality, maintainability, reliability, safety regulations and environmental issues earlier in the design process.

DFX methodologies are tools to conceive and evaluate design of products and also processes, typically at both concept and detail levels. As such, to provide meaningful comparative data, they typically quantify aspects of the design such as cost, quality and regulatory conformity. Thus they not only provide a benchmarking tool for designs but also provide an indication of the possible relative benefits of one design compared to another.

By the simple expedient of the number of hits registered on an internet search engine the researchers determined that the most prominent and widely used DFX methodologies are probably DFA and DFM. DFA provides methods to evaluate ease of assembly, assembly times and costs and also concerns the reduction of individual parts and the aggregation several components in assemblies that can be easierly mountend in the production line. DFM helps the designer to enhance manufacturability, and again provides manufacturing cost data for a product and its components. Complex cost models have similarly been developed for different manufacturing processes and their respective process parameters.

Boothroyd (1994) has assessed DFA and DFM separately and explored possible trade-offs between assembly and manufacturing costs. Equipment set up times are considered in their work and are included in their cost models. These data are treated as constants in the calculations they undertake, where Boothroyd and Dewhurst fail to accurately determine differences in changeover times between various processes. In reality changeover times are strongly dependent on the product range and the manufacturing processes used.

One objective of Design for Changeover (DFC) is to allow more accurate estimates of the changeover capabilities of manufacturing equipment, and the influence that features of the final design will have.

Design for Maintenance, also known as Design for Service (DFS), considers how subassemblies can be exchanged as quickly and easily as possible. Depending on the relative likelihood of failure of a specified component or subassembly, greater effort can be made to improve its maintainability. Primarily this is achieved by enhancing ease of assembly and disassembly of these specified elements, where the additional cost incurred to achieve this enhanced capability is justified.

Design for Disassembly is a more recent idea which aims to make the end of life processing of a product as simple as possible, to aid the reuse and recycling prospects of the components and materials.

Except some special case designs, other product based designs consider an optimized output among DFM, DFS and DFT. Manufacturing, itself have many other process like Assembling, wiring, enclosing and packing. Eventhough, assembling is a separate process, this will also be considered as part on Design for Manufacturing. As same, Design for Service, many of the services being done at customer's place. DFS will be helpful for the service engineer to unmount the subassemblies, repair and remount it. Design for Testability is again a greater phenomenon that brings quick testability of subassemblies and the whole unit. This phenomena will also determine the factor of 'how much automated the system is?'. The technology is grown such that the systems are having BIST to troubleshoot the probelm by itself.