Engineering Design and Design for Manufacturing - A Structured Approach, by John R. Dixon and Corrado Poli, is a text and reference for Mechanical Engineers and published by Field Stone Publishers. In this book's structured approach to design, engineering design is first placed in its context within the product realization process, and best practices are reviewed. Then engineering design is structured into three stages:

• Engineering conceptual design,
• Configuration design (of parts), and
• Parametric design.

At each of these stages, design problem solving is done by four clearly articulated steps of guided iteration; that is by:

• Formulation of the problem,
• Generation of alternatives,
• Evaluation of alternatives, and
• Redesign - guided by the evaluations.

Specific methods are presented and illustrated for implementing each step of guided iteration at each stage of the engineering design process.

Design for Manufacturing is integrated into each design stage, and made a part of the guided iteration design problem solving process. Early in the design process, qualitative DFM guidelines are presented, are included for the most widely used manufacturing processes, and easy to use "DFM Advisors" are developed. Later in the design process, as the design develops, quantitative DFM analysis methods are presented for estimating tooling and processing costs.

There are comprehensive chapters on manufacturing processes, and on selecting materials and manufacturing processes. In addition, there are chapters on communications (written, oral, graphical), engineering economics, and patent, liability, and ethical issues.