Design for manufacturability and design for “X”: concepts, applications, and perspectives

Design for Manufacturability (DFM) is a system approach that simultaneously considers all of the design goals and constraints for products that will be manufactured. Sometimes DFM is confused with Design for Assembly (DFA), which is only one aspect of design for Manufacturability. Other aspects include all the “design for´s” or “-abilities”; design for Quality, design for Maintainability, etc. They are sometimes referred to as “design for X” (DFX). This paper presents the concepts, applications, and perspectives of DFX, thus, providing some guidelines and references for the future researches and implementations