Design & Development Knowledge Base
Design for Asia, DFA
When designing a product for manufacture in Asia, it is critical to develop the design direction sufficiently enough to ensure that your design intent is captured correctly. If you send very early concept sketches to an Asian manufacturer, you will likely be surprised with what you get back. You will spend much time explaining what you really meant. Design for Asia (or DFA) level Design is required in order to ensure that design direction and quality control is maintained.
For commodity products, it is practically a requirement to manufacture in Asia because the market wants the lowest price.
Slingshot Product Development Group has developed an approach that provides you better project results when outsourcing in Asia. In our DFA method, we take the prototype and design process only up to the point where engineering direction is clearly established but the final engineering details are executed by an Asian manufacturer. By balancing our design process for these types of programs, we are able to save you significant development costs, while maintaining control of your development program.
See also: Commoditization, Concept Generation
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