An introduction to Design for Manufacturing (DfMA)

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Many of you have heard of design for manufacturing and assembly when I used the acronym, DFMA.

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We're going to explain to you in this course why it's not really about design, but it's going to be about the data.

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You'll also hear in this course that there is a difference between prefabrication and productization.

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I like to think of it like this.

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On the left, you see a central utility plant there that's been prefabricated by some of my friends at H.T. Lyons.

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They do it slightly differently every time depending on what the needs of the designer and the owner are.

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That's prefabrication.

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On the right, you have productization.

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That Kohler generator is scalable in its technology, but it's productized.

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We design around those products.

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They inform design.

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The future is product led and it informs design.

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If you look at this slide, you'll see "Operate" at the front of the process where many of our owners are creating playbooks,

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and talking about what they want in not just requirements, but the partnerships and the equipment,

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and how they want the data structured for their projects across the globe.

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And what's different about this that you might not recognize,

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that product led is going to show you how you have to define products that will then inform design.

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There'll be a few modules on both those topics.

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Once that design is informed, we can actually make and assemble those pieces and parts and get them on-site in the most accelerated fashion.

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All of this is supported, in our case at Autodesk,

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by our portfolio of products in our platform as well as the ecosystem of our partners that are built on Forge.

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So, we'll talk a lot about how this process works, how to connect the data,

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and how we get seamless integration so that we can use that data and apply machine learning and AI,

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to truly understand predictive analysis for the future, moving towards autonomous buildings for better end use for all.

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Holistic sustainability is one of my passions, and it's obviously important for the entire global community.

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What's really great about productization is it's going to be the single most important thing,

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to directly affect the 40% of waste that is in our landfills right now driven by the construction industry.

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Productization will remove that waste from our world.

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Remember, digital waste always leads to exponential physical waste.

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And part of this connected process of productization and data is going to save us.

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That's right. I said, "save us".

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And in order for us to have the new possible created in our world,

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to truly live the way we want for a sustainable future for everyone, we need transformation.

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That's why we've developed this transformation framework.

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If you look at it, there are outcomes that actually drive adoption.

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Whether you are a person or a company or a culture in another organization of a country,

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you wanna understand what outcomes you're looking for in order to transform.

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I've collected a few here that are most common across the Convergence customers I work with.

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Things like safety and risk reduction.

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Schedule, very important for certainty as well as shrinking the schedule for some of the critical infrastructure that we need.

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Holistic sustainability, and we'll do a whole course about that, why it's important to most of our customers and our planet.

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And business growth, how do we transform to create competitive advantages for those businesses we work with,

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in order to win more work, good work that we know we can execute with certainty.

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Those are outcomes that I hear often for why people wanna transform their organizations.

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But that's not enough.

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You have to actually have a strategy for transforming, and that strategy needs to be in steps.

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You can't eat an elephant, you know, at one bite.

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You have to kinda eat an elephant one bite at a time.

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So where does it start?

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You have to start with some first steps of concrete action.

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The first one is foundational.

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You need to make sure that your organization has the right culture,

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the right culture for learning and leadership in order for you to make sure the metrics are in place for to do new things,

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to reward and incentivize those people that are doing new things to apply to many future projects.

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You also wanna make sure that your organization or yourself that you have the skills in order to transform.

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You may need different skills.

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In fact, I know you will need different skills as a person and as an organization in the future.

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And assessing your current skill set of yourself or your organization and understanding where that gap is, that readiness factor.

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That's very important.

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We will also look at technology and processes, especially technology as we move through this course.

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And we wanna make sure you have the foundational systems architecture to connect that data and that you're ready for the manufacturing techniques.

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I like to use the example of manufacturing readiness.

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At your level one for manufacturing readiness, and you want to buy a six-axis arm robot,

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which is at level four readiness for manufacturing, you could afford to buy that piece of machinery,

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but it probably isn't going to do you much good.

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It'll actually either just collect dust in your factory or it'll make scrap faster.

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You have to make sure that you're ready for these technological advances, and that's foundational.

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The next level is productization, and I don't just mean of the physicality of the piece part you saw in the prefabrication continuum.

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We'll talk a lot about how this mindset of productization needs to drive data reusability.

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So, you have to attach a productized workflow to that physical piece and part,

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and there'll be a whole lesson on productization where we discuss this.

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We really have to change our mindset.

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And then and only then can we move to digitization.

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I don't mean getting off paper.

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We've hopefully done that already.

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But digitization, that's going to enable automation and connected processes so that we could remove steps out of the process.

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We can automate them and make everything more efficient and connected, seamless data. Right?

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You need that connection for level four so you can start thinking on platform thinking, and that's going to be enabled by the cloud.

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Remember, we talked about that the cloud and something like Forge,

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where our platform is built at Autodesk, is going to enable all stakeholders to access that data, to build software,

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to fill that connective tissue that's needed in our ecosystem for this seamless connection for all stakeholders to act on that data.

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And when I say act on that data, I mean optimize the use of that data in things like industrialized construction

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, digital twins, and things like generative design.

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When we talk about optimization, I want to make sure we take those products that we've digitized and connected,

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and use enhanced capabilities that exist in technology today.

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They already exist, and more is coming to optimize that data.

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But if you don't have the first four steps, you will never be able to optimize.

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And then we have to ask ourselves, why are we doing this?

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We talked about, you know, the landfills and being able to remove that waste, but we're doing this for circularity,

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not just circularity, you know, understanding how these materials get re you know, reused in our buildings,

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but digital reuse and physical reuse.

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I like to say to all of my architects that work in virtual design and construction,

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we have to start judging our performance based on how many things we never have to draw again.

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How many things can we reuse because we've productized them in parametric form that we can adjust for many different options?

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How many things can we utilize and feed into things like generative design to create different outcomes,

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without having to draw new things, without having to do new processes, without having to teach people new behaviors?

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That digital waste has to be removed so that we can reuse physical things and digital things.

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We have to first start at the digital side.

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That's so important.

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Many of us jump right to reuse of physical pieces and parts.

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That's not going to get us where we want to go for the new possible of circularity.

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That reuse drives everything we do.

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We have to make sure that we're doing this to reuse digital things across multiple projects and platforms,

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and that we can use those workflows many different times so we can improve upon them.

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The first time, here's a trick.

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You're not gonna be very good at it.

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You're never very good at the first time you do anything.

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That's why these steps are so important, so we can evaluate our process and get better at it.

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And that's really from lean manufacturing, continuous improvement.

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We wanna get to that place and transform for the new possible.

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This framework, you'll see reference throughout lots of the course materials in some of the subject matter.

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In order to transform, we must follow a framework.

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This framework will get you both personally and within any organization that you work now or work in the future will get you to that new possible.

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It's very important.

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I'm ready to transform.

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Are you?