Fasteners Can Consume 20-50% of Assembly Labor
The data-driven people in our lives tell us that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. I believe that. And it’s no different with product cost. Before improving product cost, before designing it out, you have to know where it is. However, it can be difficult to know what really creates cost. Not all parts and features are created equal; some create more cost than others, and it’s often unclear which are the heavy hitters. Sometimes the heavy hitters don’t look heavy, and often are buried deeply within the hidden factory.
Measure, measure, measure. That’s what the black belts say. However, it’s difficult to do well with product cost since our costing methods are hosed up and our measurement systems are limited. What do I mean? Consider fasteners (e.g., nuts, bolts, screws, and washers), the product’s most basic life form. Because fasteners are not on the BOM, they’re not part of product cost. Here’s the party line: it’s overhead to be shared evenly across all the products in a socialist way. That’s not a big deal, right? Wrong. Although fasteners don’t cost much in ones and twos, they do add up. 300-500 pieces per unit times the number of units per year makes for a lot of unallocated and untracked cost. However, a more significant issue with those little buggers is they take a lot of time attach to the product. For example, using standard time data from DFMA software, assembly of a 1/4″ nut with a bolt, locktite, a lockwasher, and cleanup takes 50 seconds. That’s a lot of time. You should be asking yourself what that translates to in your product. To figure it out, multiply the number nut/bolt/washer groupings by 50 seconds and multiply the result by the number of units per year. Actually, never mind. You can’t do the calculation because you don’t know the number of nut/bolt/washer combinations that are in your product. You could try to query your BOMs, but the information is likely not there. Remember, fasteners are overhead and not allocated to product. Have you ever tried to do a cost reduction project on overhead? It’s impossible. Because overhead inflicts pain evenly to all, no one is responsible to reduce it.
With fasteners, it’s like death by a thousand cuts.
The time to attach them can be as much as 20-50% of labor. That’s right, up to 50%. That’s like paying 20-50% of your folks to attach fasteners all day. That should make you sick. But it’s actually worse than that. From Line Design 101, the number of assembly stations is proportional to demand times labor time. Since fasteners inflate labor time, they also inflate the number of assembly stations, which, in turn, inflates the factory floor space needed to meet demand. Would you rather design out fasteners or add 15% to your floor space? I know you can get good deals on factory floor space due to the recession, but I’d still rather design out fasteners.
Even with the amount of assembly labor consumed by fasteners, our thinking and computer systems are blind to them and the associated follow-on costs. And because of our vision problems, the design community cannot be held accountable to design out those costs. We’ve given them the opportunity to play dumb and say things like, “Those fastener things are free. I’m not going to spend time worrying about that. It’s not part of the product cost.” Clearly not an enlightened statement, but it’s difficult to overcome without cost allocation data for the fasteners.
The work-around for our ailing thinking and computer-based cost tracking systems is simple: get the design engineers out to the production floor to build the product. Have them experience first hand how much waste is in the product. They’ll come back with a deep-in-the-gut understanding of how things really are. Then, have them use DFMA software to score the existing design, part-by-part, feature-by-feature. I guarantee everyone will know where the cost is after that. And once they know where the cost is, it will be easy for them to design it out.
I have data to support my assertion that fasteners can make up 20-50% of labor time, but don’t take my word for it. Go out to the factory floor, shut your eyes and listen. You’ll likely hear the never ending song of the nut runners. With each chirp, another nut is fastened to its bolt and washer, and another small bit of labor and factory floor space is consumed by the lowly fastener.
Hi Mike,
Glad to see a design engineering leader who understands production and true cost savings. The next step is to talk about eliminating fasteners and saving assembly costs by designing with less total parts. How much can you save when 4 sku’s replace 22 sku’s?
Steve
I totally agree with the notion that hardware is often overlooked in designs because its potential cost savings may be seen as insignificant. But when coupled with labor saving the potential cost cutting benefits start to show. For example lets say that you manufacture a product in which you sell approximately 320 a month with a cycle time of about thirty minutes. On that product you have sixteen connections that require a hex head cap screw, flat washer, lock washer, and a nut.
What if your design allowed you to replace your washers and nut with a serrated flanged locknut? The flange takes place of the flat washer, while the serrations take place of the lock washer. Let’s say that with the change you could save 1 cent per connection or 16 cents per part. Not bad considering that would add up to over $600 a year.
Now consider that the reduction of parts would save you 4 seconds per connection or 64 seconds per product. That would equate to 17 minutes a day and 85 minutes a week which would allow you to produce approximately 3 more parts per week. At a rate of $60 per hour you would save $4400 in a year by not handling the 120,000 washers.
Who would have though that you could save over $5,400 in a year by replacing a couple of washers?
Amazing stuff, Thank you.
[…] your design more efficient and easier to assemble. Traditional fasteners such as nuts and bolts eat up enormous amounts of assembly time, and threaded fasteners can be particularly labor-intensive. Built-in fasteners such as snap fits […]