Uncovering Hidden Waste in Product Design
David Prawel

As you walk onto the factory floor of your next manufacturing operation, years of experience have prepared you to quickly assess the health of the site. You’ve developed “eyes for waste - eyes for flow.” You know the mission – production processes create customer value through the transformation of labor & materials. You have honed your observation skills, and you’re instantly clicking through your mental checklist of symptoms as you quickly assess the health of the operation. Personal knowledge, experience and practice guide you as you walk among the machines and their operators, providing feedback and direction.

Rounding the first corner you see the first evidence of process rework. At second glance it’s hard to determine if this is a rework loop or part of the mainstream production process. Parts are stacked to the ceiling. Mountains of scrap are stacked behind the plant with no apparent plans for rework. What a mess. No competitive manufacturing operation can operate for long like this. You have no choice but to react -- instinctively, quickly and forcefully -- to bring this operation into control.

As you’re walking back from the plant, you pass through your design department...

You pass the cluster of office dividers that house your CAD operators. Good news… they have that calm focus and apparent productivity you have come to count on. You think to yourself, thankfully, that you are really glad you made that investment in modern CAD capabilities. These tools are marvelous and deliver remarkable precision in design and process definition.

But, what you aren’t aware of is how much waste there is in your CAD operation – you never considered it. You have no idea how much time your CAD operators are spending creating new products, or adding value to existing products, or how much time your designers spend simply fixing errors in CAD data, or recreating CAD data that, for whatever reason, needed to be done over. You have no idea how much time your designers spend trying to figure out what another CAD user or one of your suppliers was trying to do in a CAD model, and patching the model with useless data to make it appear correct, when, in fact, it would have to be done over later when you try to manufacture it. Few managers would.

Very few of us are trained to accurately assess the elements of productivity that apply to the design process. We are all trained to see waste in our factory, and what to do about it, but not the mountains of “scrap” that we produce in design and engineering. We all have learned how to do value stream analysis, value-added (VA) and non-value-add (NVA) and how it affects efficiency in our production plants. But we simply cannot see what goes on between the CAD software and its user, and the computer network that connects the CAD users to the PLM systems and the huge disk farms that store all the data. You cannot even imagine how much time is spent in rework. Managers have no training or experience in assessing design rework. So this waste generally goes undetected, or is simply accepted. This is not the factory floor.

In fact, within a CAD department, most time is spent in rework…period. In our experience, typical design departments spend approximately 20 percent of their collective time creating CAD models; 30 percent of their time detailing them; and 50 percent of their time editing. One could easily get into a lengthy discussion about how much of the editing time is VA versus NVA, but this isn’t even the key observation. Of greatest relevance to any company is the recognition that “design rework” is too often a euphemism for starting over. Most of the time when our designers, analysts or manufacturing engineers attempt to edit a typical CAD model, it simply explodes. This is clearly waste –yet you walk right by it every day.

“Within a CAD department, most time is spent in rework…period.”

This may sound surprising, but the bigger issue is we have taught our CAD people to use their CAD systems this way. When our CAD designers take 3D CAD training, they are taught to construct CAD models by associating features to each other, creating “parent-child” relationships. It’s the technique the CAD vendors teach their training providers. Admittedly, it is an intuitive construction methodology. But, it creates huge problems when another designer or engineer tries to change the model, or in countless downstream applications where changes occur as a fact of life. While many of us who are engaged in manufacturing enterprises strive to re-use design and process modules (risk reduction; capital management; etc.) our CAD departments are plagued with the chronic task of starting over…of model recreation, rework and waste.

If you think this is an exaggeration, don’t take my word for it. Instead, visit your own CAD department and see for yourself -- and don’t make it a drive-by. Ask your best CAD operators to show you exactly what is required to edit an existing model for a new product application. And make sure they don’t pick the easiest model on the shelf, but a typical model that’s core to your business. Use the skills you’ve developed on the factory floor to assess productivity, efficiency, and the like, and be ready for a shock not unlike when you see the pile of waste outside the back door of the plant.

Let me assume (for the sake of completing this treatise) that you’re convinced there is significant waste in your design factory. There is a high-impact solution. Consider simply changing the basic technique your designers use to create their CAD models – a slight spin in their construction methodology. This technique does not require the purchase of any new hardware or software, just some learning. In all likelihood, the products you’ve already purchased are absolutely fine. And it lets your designers maintain all the creative styles that underlie their innovative skills.

Your focus should be on finding a standardized approach to model construction – not only to maximize CAD model re-use – but to clearly link your product model to the associated process definition. Imagine if changes made on your product model could easily propagate throughout the process sequence. This is the desired end-game and, until recently, commercial solutions offered by leading CAD vendors have been costly and awkward.

It is of paramount importance that every manufacturer standardize work wherever and however possible. Six Sigma is a good example, and the payoffs are clear. Lacking a standardized set of best practices for our global design operation, we standardized our design methodologies over the last 10years. Our methods, now known widely as Delphi’s Design Methodologies or DDM, have been remarkably effective within my own global Engineering Factory. We have consistently reduced time required during CAD model construction by 50 percent. And, we have reduced time required to edit models by 90 percent.

“Time required for model construction has been reduced by percent p.
And, we have reduced time required to edit models by 90 percent.”

As we strive to react quickly to cost reduction and quality improvement initiatives, our design department often has been the constraining function. As those of you trained in the essentials of plant productivity know – highest impact results from focusing on the bottleneck operation. This has been our unique focus.

You probably already are using standardized methodologies in your own operations. Proven methods, like Six-Sigma and CM-II, have been recognized for their intrinsic benefit and many manufacturers have adopted these precepts through training and coaching. Delphi’s Design Methodologies are no different. Tangible organizational benefit is derived through common understanding, direction and leadership. Understanding comes via training and coaching. Direction and leadership are up to us.

I would encourage you to think more broadly about flow, waste and your overall efficiency in Engineering. There is money to be gained within your own operations by focusing on design methodologies. If you want to learn more about our design methodologies, please visit our Web site at www.delphi.com/.