(Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc.: Wakefield, Rhode Island) -- Sixty-eight percent of a survey group, including Fortune 400 companies, measured an increase in production throughput, and 47 percent an increase in profit per unit of factory floor space, after applying design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA) techniques to their organizations’ supply chains.

Respondents included Dell, Motorola, TRW Automotive, Raytheon, MDS Analytical Technologies, Magna Intier Automotive Seating and other leading North American manufacturers. Some participants also contributed to a candid roundtable discussion about applying design simplification and early costing to lean and Six Sigma programs, along with the opportunities missed by industry in measuring financial best practices.

“We achieved a 300 percent increase in profit per square foot of factory floor space by taking a lot of cost and labor out of product using DFMA tools,” says Mike Shipulski, director of engineering, Hypertherm Inc., a leader in plasma cutting technology. “Like many others who participated in this survey, we’ve barely begun documenting some of the savings we know we’re achieving. Everyone in industry recognizes the limitations of using traditional cost accounting methods to identify overhead savings outside the areas of directly applied labor and materials.”

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