Engineering Spotlight: Manufacturability for Metal Stampings

Collaboration between engineering teams of contract manufacturers and their customers (tiered suppliers and OEMs) is becoming increasingly crucial for success in manufacturing. A partner who specializes in design for manufacturability (DFM) can save you from many headaches down the road in your part program, especially when it comes to metal stamping.

At LMC Industries, our engineering team uses over a century of combined experience in metal forming to identify potential problem areas in the design of stamped parts and work with our customers to find solutions. You’ll never see our team simply “toss a print over the wall” to our production team without examining it with a critical eye. 

Why Optimize Part Design for Manufacturability?

Ensuring that part designs are optimized for manufacturability can reduce the risk of high scrap rates once full production is underway. Minimizing scrap rates help contract metal stamping partners deliver on promised turnaround times, increase press efficiency, and save on material costs. 

Catching problem areas and resolving them before full production is underway can also prevent costly errors in tooling design. Our team at LMC also offers you the benefit of a full-scale tooling department in-house so our engineers can work directly with our tooling professionals, all with the goal of making your program run smoothly with in spec results on your parts. 

How We Optimize

It’s always best when our engineering team can get involved with yours from the beginning of a program, but it’s never too late to make improvements. Here are a few ways we provide design for manufacturability (DFM) support to our customers:

• Process capability studies. Most drawings we receive include process capability elements, including significant characteristics and critical characteristics (SCs and CCs) that must hold to specific tolerances and capability. We can conduct studies on short sample runs to ensure we can meet your CCs and SCs before entering full production. 

• Advanced product quality planning (APQP). Our team is well-versed in the structured process of APQP for new programs. This process not only ensures that your part designs are optimized for manufacturability, but also helps mitigate other risks and can result in higher customer satisfaction in your end parts.
• Feasibility reviews. Feasibility reviews will be conducted early in  the life of your program to pinpoint areas for improvement in manufacturability. Our feasibility reviews include critical analysis of your part design by our team members and specialized software to identify percentages of thinning, thickening, as well as other forming stress induced problem areas.

If you’re introducing a new metal stamping part program or simply looking to improve the results of an existing one, LMC Industries can help. Connect with one of our experts today to get started!