Dr. Mike Lamoureux invited us to join his discussion of the “Top Three” most important and/or hottest subjects in Supply Chain and Spend Management. These are related and adjacent spaces to Enterprise Cost Management, so I thought that I would choose a topic that intimately links both: “Design-for-Supply, a.k.a. Design-for-Sourcing, a.k.a. DFS”. I have seen a lot of talk lately on the Sourcing, Supply Chain, and Spend Management blogs about this subject, and that is great. Some of you may be wondering, exactly what is it, how does it related to the other “DFx’s” I have heard of, why is it important, and how do you actually do it.
DF is “Design for” and X is whatever you want it to be – typically a product or process attribute like Cost, Manufacturability, Assembly, Service or… Supply/Sourcing. And if you can think of an X, there are ubiquitous professors who have written about it and a plethora of consultants to provide ‘expert’ advice on it… for a small fee, of course. DFx’s are always written up as panaceas for all your business woes. If it’s Design-for-Environment, it will help not only improve your products environmental impact, but also it’s cost, delivery time, cure cancer, etc. I’m just joking, of course, but those of you who have been around DFx’s know what I am saying. However, there is some truth in the claims about the DFx’s. Each has a primary target (the product or process attribute for which they are named), and if done right, will help in a secondary way or, at least, support other attribute quests.
As the name implies, the DFx’s come from the engineering world and are targeted at the design engineer. The other functions are critical for supporting the effort, but it is design engineering that actually has to DO the DFx’s. To put it bluntly, DFx’s were developed to enable and push engineering to consider attributes they typically don’t [don’t worry, my membership in the engineering fraternity gives me the impunity to say this]. I mean, no one is out there promoting “Design for Fit,” “Design for Form,” or “Design for Function”. Why? Because, engineers are born with these attributes seared into their brains.
But for all the non-engineers reading this post, no need to be frightened. This DFx stuff is part of engineering jargon, but it’s not Navier Stokes equations. For reference, please see my World of DFx table below.
So, how do all these DFx’s relate. Well, I talked about this from a cost point of view in a previous blog. For convenience, I present simpler relationship diagram techniques below. Now that you are expert on WHAT this DFx is, next time we will focus on Design for Sourcing specifically and talk a little bit about HOW to do it effectively.
Comments