A competitive design approach for machine cost optimization: an industrial case study

One of the biggest unsolved problems of modern industry is cost optimization of complex machines from the early stages of design. Indeed, it requires a synthetic analysis of manufacturing knowledge and a successful collaboration among the numerous actors involved in cost and performance evaluation. Although some methodologies and different theoretical approaches have been defined, effective implementation is still far from reality due to hard implementation that takes a lot of time and requires a strong collaboration among highly specialized resources with different background and expertise. In such context, this paper presents a methodology integrating Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) principles, Design To Cost (DTC) and Value Analysis (VA) to optimize complex system design from the conceptual stages. It presents an industrial case study focused on cost machine optimization by the application of the proposed approach. In particular, it focused on the re-design of an automated machine for drug management and implemented a set of cost optimization actions, which brought to a 20% global cost saving and a sensible improvement of product sustainability and reliability due to product structure simplification as well as optimization of manufacturing processes.