DFM&A (Manufacturing)
Design for Manufacture & Assembly.
The modernist dream is materializing. Slowly, architecture is meeting manufacturing.
Most architects have not yet fully appreciated the radical differences between manufacture, and construction. Why not? Architects’ work products are representations (drawings) of the final product. The few assembly drawings (sections) they may make are still so highly interpretive... they’re worse than inadequate. They take skilled craftsmen time to stop and properly unpack.
Worse: the few 21st C. architectural tools that make a database about the product information (BIM) only track individual elements (toilets, windows, etc.) and pre-assemblies (wall types, floor types, etc.).
These simulations are incomplete until they also track connections (welded, screwed, nailed, etc.). Once they track connections, architects morph into a designer that can fully appreciate the skilled labor that makes the majority of a building’s budget.
Tracking connection types unfolds a wealth of understanding. Once unlocked, one can watch a designer:
Designers who understand the power of this will stop conversation to clarify the difference between “DFM” & “DFA” -- and how both contribute unique skills to DFM&A.
Architects who graduate to this level of designer tend to grow an aversion to drywall. They muse about alternatives to studs and masonry.
Still more inspiring, designers who appreciate this wisdom slowly grow to enjoy the poetic of the seam in whole new ways. They are far more likely to stop to admire the craft of a common joint, and smile at the most commonplace products.
We’re surrounded by very clever solutions, if you just know how to see them.
The modernist dream is materializing. Slowly, architecture is meeting manufacturing.
Most architects have not yet fully appreciated the radical differences between manufacture, and construction. Why not? Architects’ work products are representations (drawings) of the final product. The few assembly drawings (sections) they may make are still so highly interpretive... they’re worse than inadequate. They take skilled craftsmen time to stop and properly unpack.
Worse: the few 21st C. architectural tools that make a database about the product information (BIM) only track individual elements (toilets, windows, etc.) and pre-assemblies (wall types, floor types, etc.).
These simulations are incomplete until they also track connections (welded, screwed, nailed, etc.). Once they track connections, architects morph into a designer that can fully appreciate the skilled labor that makes the majority of a building’s budget.
Tracking connection types unfolds a wealth of understanding. Once unlocked, one can watch a designer:
- divide “construction” into “fabrication” and & “assembly,”
- understand the nuanced contributions of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 suppliers.
-
manage a
hierarchy
of labor at each stage of fabrication, and,
-
learn to budget only the most critical connections (final assemblies) in the urban, costly, Tier 1 facilities.
Designers who understand the power of this will stop conversation to clarify the difference between “DFM” & “DFA” -- and how both contribute unique skills to DFM&A.
Architects who graduate to this level of designer tend to grow an aversion to drywall. They muse about alternatives to studs and masonry.
Still more inspiring, designers who appreciate this wisdom slowly grow to enjoy the poetic of the seam in whole new ways. They are far more likely to stop to admire the craft of a common joint, and smile at the most commonplace products.
We’re surrounded by very clever solutions, if you just know how to see them.
