DFMA Case Study: Firehose Reel Redesign

DFMA Case Study: Firehose Reel Redesign

A leading European company specializing in firefighting systems encountered a problem with one of its core products, a firehose reel. The existing design was more than a decade old and no longer met European standards, and the reel itself often suffered from worn-out components.

The manufacturing process was inefficient, with high part counts, complex assembly, and high assembly costs. For instance, almost half of the total assembly time was spent on the main assembly, not including the various sub-assemblies the product required.

The company recognized that the firehose reel needed an urgent redesign to stay competitive and meet current standards. They leveraged the rich functionality of DFMA software to reduce the number of product manufacturing parts, saving time and money. Below are the results they achieved from the project.

Part Count

One of the primary redesign goals was to significantly reduce the number of components required to manufacture the hose reel. The existing product had too many parts and several screw bolts that complicated the assembly process and drove costs higher.

The company decided to use a modular design with plastic parts that would resist wear, be less costly, and further simplify part production and assembly.

By redesigning the reel, they reduced the total part count by 54 percent, from 59 parts in the original product to 27 in the new version.

Assembly Operations

Since the product required fewer parts, the assembly process became much simpler.

The company’s goal was to utilize DFMA software to identify the most expensive operations and modify them to increase efficiency and minimize assembly costs. The software guided their optimization efforts by providing designers with a clear picture of the costs associated with each assembly operation.

As a result, they were able to cut the number of assembly operations by 54 percent, from 106 tasks in the original to 49 in the new version.

The new design also made it possible to assemble the reel from only one side. It also led to the implementation of a specialized assembly arm that facilitated production and simplified the mechanism for mounting the reel to walls during customer installations.

Assembly Time

Part of the original product’s high cost was due to the volume of time required for each assembly. The company wanted to reduce assembly time by 40 percent. They surpassed that goal and achieved a 50 percent reduction.

Assembly time plummeted from 525 seconds to just 264 seconds.

Total Cost Savings

The two main redesign project goals were to reduce costs while simultaneously improving the hose reel product to make it more competitive. The company used cost analysis features in DFMA software to identify costs for each individual part and assembly process and detect areas where costs could be optimized.

The objective was to cut costs by 30 percent, but this goal was surpassed by a significant margin.

The redesign resulted in a 50 percent reduction in total costs, largely because of the streamlined assembly operations.

DFMA software could save your company 50 percent in manufacturing and assembly costs.

Now that you’ve seen what’s possible from a DFMA-guided redesign, you can stop leaving money on the table. Contact us today to get started.