Design for manufacturability (DFM), also known as design for manufacturing, is the engineering practice of designing a product to reduce the cost of its manufacture and to make its manufacture easier, and often the two aspects are intertwined. Common factors that affect manufacturability include the type of raw material, the form of the raw material, dimensional tolerances, and secondary processing such as finishing.

DFM applies broadly yet differs widely depending on the manufacturing technology.

In the printed circuit board (PCB) design process, DFM leads to a set of design guidelines that attempt to ensure manufacturability. By doing so, probable production problems may be addressed during the design stage.

Ideally, DFM guidelines take into account the processes and capabilities of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, DFM is constantly evolving.

As manufacturing companies evolve and automate more and more stages of the processes, these processes tend to become cheaper. DFM is usually used to reduce these costs. For example, if a process may be done automatically by machines (i.e. SMT component placement and soldering), such process is likely to be cheaper than doing so by hand.

Semiconductor DFM is a set of principles and techniques used in integrated circuit (IC) design to ensure that those designs transition smoothly into high-volume manufacturing with optimal yield and reliability. DFM focuses on anticipating potential fabrication issues and proactively modifying chip layouts and circuits to mitigate their impact.

As semiconductor technology scales to smaller nodes, transistors and interconnects become incredibly dense and sensitive to subtle variations in the manufacturing process. These variations can lead to defects that cause chips to malfunction or degrade their performance. DFM aims to minimize the impact of these variations, improving yield and making chip manufacturing more cost-effective.

Some common DFM techniques used in semiconductor design include: