If you have been manufacturing a product for a few years, there is a good chance your current design made sense when it was first engineered. Materials were sourced, suppliers were established, and the product worked. So nobody questioned it.

But manufacturing assumptions that made sense five years ago do not always hold up today. And one of the most common opportunities we see when we sit down with engineers is this: parts that could be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable if they were redesigned as a single die casting.

What Is Component Consolidation?

Component consolidation is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of assembling a finished product from multiple separate parts — machined components, brackets, housings, covers — you redesign them as a single die cast part that performs all the same functions.

The result is fewer parts to source, fewer assembly steps, less labour, and lower cost per unit. With no sacrifice in strength or performance.

Where the Savings Actually Come From

The cost reduction from component consolidation is not just about the price of the casting itself. The savings stack up across the entire production process.

Fewer parts to purchase and manage

Every part in your bill of materials has a cost attached to it beyond the unit price. There is purchasing time, supplier management, incoming inspection, inventory space, and the risk of a stockout. Reducing your part count directly reduces all of those costs.

Less assembly time

Assembly labour is one of the most significant costs in manufacturing. Every fastener, every bracket, every sub-assembly adds time. A single casting that replaces three or four parts can cut assembly time substantially, and that savings compounds across every unit you produce.

Fewer failure points

Every joint, fastener, and interface between parts is a potential failure point. A single casting eliminates those interfaces entirely. The result is a more reliable product with less warranty risk and fewer quality escapes in the field.

Lower tooling cost than most people expect

The most common objection we hear is the upfront tooling cost. And it is a fair question. But die casting tooling is often significantly less expensive than engineers expect, and the break-even point against assembly savings is typically reached faster than anticipated. At volume, the economics are almost always compelling.

What Makes a Good Candidate for Consolidation?

Not every product is a candidate, but many are. The best opportunities tend to share some common characteristics:

• Multiple parts that are always assembled together and never replaced individually
• Machined or fabricated housings, brackets, covers, or structural components
• Parts that require tight tolerances or good surface finish
• Assemblies where labour cost is a significant portion of total build cost
• Products made from aluminum or zinc alloys, or that could be

If you are looking at your bill of materials and there are clusters of parts that always ship together, that is usually a good place to start the conversation.

How the Process Works

The best time to explore component consolidation is early in a product redesign or new product development cycle, when changes are still easy to make. But it is also worth revisiting on mature products if cost reduction is a priority.

At Simalex we typically start with a design review — looking at the current assembly, understanding the functional requirements, and identifying where consolidation makes sense. From there we can provide a rough cost comparison and tooling estimate so you have real numbers to work with before committing to anything.

The conversation is usually pretty short. Either the opportunity is there or it is not. But it is almost always worth finding out.

A Note on Design for Manufacturability

Component consolidation is one aspect of a broader practice called design for manufacturability, or DFM. DFM means designing parts with the manufacturing process in mind from the start, rather than designing first and figuring out how to make it later.

Die casting has specific design considerations — wall thickness, draft angles, parting lines, and gate locations among them. Understanding these early in the design process results in parts that are easier to cast, more consistent, and less expensive to produce. Working with your die casting supplier at the design stage rather than after the fact is one of the highest leverage things a product team can do.

Is It Worth the Conversation?

If you manufacture a product that includes aluminum or zinc components and you have not reviewed your design through a die casting lens recently, the answer is probably yes.

The downside of having the conversation is 20 minutes. The upside could be meaningful cost reduction per unit that compounds across your entire production volume.