Supply Chains: A Manager's Guide

Designing for Supply

In the 1980s there was a major effort among manufacturing companies to design products that were easier to build. This effort, known both as design for manufacturing and concurrent engineering, was a significant departure from past practices, in which engineers designed a product and then handed it over to manufacturing to figure out how to build it. By taking manufacturing requirements into account during the design process, companies that adopted this approach were able to simplify production, reduce costs, and enhance quality.

Today, design for manufacturing is being pushed outside the four walls of the factory and applied to entire supply chains. The new movement—called design for supply—takes into account the entire ...