Kurt Wiessmeyer

Manufacturing Engineering

Prof. Peter Rourke

3/26/19

Design for Manual Assembly: Boothroyd Dewhurst Method

Using the set of guidelines given by Boothroyd Dewhurst, students were tasked with quantifying
each of the parts in an example piston assembly. The assembly is comprised of six different parts, and
each part was assigned various metrics based on its ability to be manually handled and assembled.
Based on the guidelines in the Boothroyd Dewhurst handbook, each part was given a two-digit code
corresponding to its ease of handling and insertion. Higher code values indicate more difficult assembly,
which in turn relates to longer assembly times. For example, a part that requires pliers or a screwdriver
in order to be assembled will generally take longer than one that can be attached by hand. The following
table shows the different metrics for each part and the total assembly time.

Figure 1: DFMA table using the parts in the given assembly.

 After the first table was completed, students were tasked with simplifying the design of the
piston assembly and cutting out extraneous parts. This process is heavily based on the results of column
nine of the table—parts with a value of zero in this column may be considered non-vital to the assembly.
Following this column as a guide, we came up with a design to combine the functionality of the piston
stop, cover, and screws into one part. The idea was to attach the piston stop to the bottom of the cover,
and to include a snap-fit along the edges of this piece to clip onto the main block. This results in one part
that is noticeably faster and easier to manually handle and insert onto the assembly. The updated DFMA
table is shown below.

Figure 2: DFMA table after removing extraneous parts and redesigning the assembly.