DFM Management Automation
Author: Peter Pan
PSI has been planning and carrying out the internal process management automation and paperless since 2012. We have built a self-developed MIS system which is able to connect with the ERP system data and establishes a low volume and high mix product production management mode that is different with other EMS company. At the year-end of staff meeting, each department sets up the topics that need to be automated in the next year and will conduct "flow discussion / specification determination / program writing / testing & trial implementation & go live." The "DFM (Design for Manufacture) management" is main project for the introduction of automated management in 2020 set by marketing department.
Because the industry chain adopts the form of professional division of labor and cooperation, most of the self-owned product companies focus on product design, development and marketing. The product production is handled by professional company. Therefore, company can give immediate feedback on problems of affecting production due to design on each new product is in the trial production stage for letting customers with "confirmation / assessment / modification" of products during trial production, shorten the design cycle, discover design problems early and have a better production yield and efficiency when introducing mass production that is one of the important keys to whether the product can be successfully listed.

Current practice:

  1. The customer places an order for trial production products, and each process engineer checks whether the trial product work order has design problems such as PCB PAD design does not match the foot pitch of the parts, PCB panelization suggestion, case assembly is not easy and so on.
  2. After the production engineer confirms the problem, fill in the DFM Report and then notify the marketing department to provide it to the customer via Email.
  3. The marketing engineer regularly tracks the results of customer replies and customers respond to suggestions made by PSI.
  4. After the customer responds, the marketing engineer informs the production department to confirm the improvement effect of the next batch of production.

Future practice:

  1. The system automatically detects and tests work orders for production products and proactively informs the production engineer to prepare for DFM problem confirmation before production.
  2. According to the "process type" of the trial production work order, the system can automatically notify each process that the process must provide a DFM Report and the system automatically aggregates the content of the questions raised by each process.
  3. The DFM Report after system consolidation is provided to the customer by email from the marketing or sales department, please reply.
  4. The system regularly sends emails to track the customer's reply results and the customer responds according to PSI's suggestions.
  5. After the customer responds, import it into system and the system will notify the production engineer to track the improvement of the next batch of production to confirm the effectiveness.
With the completion of the DFM management automation this year, it will be able to play a more effective management method, and provide customers with a more complete and one-time service, and solve the problem of missing the DFM report currently provided for trial production work orders. PSI will be able to provide customers with faster, more and better services for low to middle volume and high mix production in EMS field and also allows customers to rest assured that his products will be produced in our company to obtain customer trust and create a win-win situation.