80 percent of manufacturing costs are determined in the first 20 percent of the product development process. Design has the key to take cost and waste out of manufacturing.

Digital design and fabrication tools are catalysts to realize this potential and fundamentally tranform the manufacturing industry, creating new opportunities for upcoming generations of entrepreneurs.

Design for Manufacturing Forum brings together product developers, industrial designers, engineers, makers and manufacturers for a more decentralized, leaner manufacturing ecosystem.

Design for Manufacturing Forum is an independent, bootstrapped initiative by former Dutch journalist and exiled New Yorker Peter Verkooijen.

Design for Manufacturing Forum launched in January 2012, with a first DFM Summit in Brooklyn on April 26 of that year. DFM Forum followed the launches of the Geoweb and Social Retail Forum projects in the two years before.

The three Forum projects were a response to the financial crisis. The goal was to find new paths to growth with real value creation in a post-internet, decentralized economy, offering opportunities for younger generations.

DFM Forum in its early days spawned the Lean Startup concept and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance. DFM pioneer Sandy Munro keynoted DFM Summits in Brooklyn and Toronto.

Design for Manufacturing Summits in Toronto and London were launched in 2015. The semi-annual DFM Summits in Brooklyn continued with help from local partner.

In December 2022 regular DFM Summits resumed in London after two years of global legal and political uncertainty.