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by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

What is Design for Six Sigma?

What is Design for Six Sigma?

For the majority of organizations, long-term success is tied directly to the new product development process. Tomorrow’s revenue and growth are tightly bound to how successful you are at launching new products.

Offering genuinely valuable, high quality products is, more than ever, the best way to capture market share.  Also, more investment up-front minimizes overall expense.

…fewer design iterations to achieve the same goals (reduced time to market), more efficient production and delivery processes (reduced operating costs), fewer defects & warranty costs during the entire product life cycle (increased customer satisfaction).

Recall our overarching goal for product development and process improvement:  to maximize customer value and minimize cost.  Design for Six Sigma can help achieve this goal as follows:

Understand Customer Needs

  • Determine customer critical to quality characteristics (CTQ’s) that define product success
  • Establish requirements for CTQs (specification limits, mean and variability targets, failure rate and life targets
  • Establish part/process sigma goals for the manufacturing/assembly/test process

Define Initial Design Concept 

  • Formulate design concept and develop models relating key design variables to CTQ’s
  • Allocate mean and variability targets and failure rate and life targets to appropriate level

Model Design Performance

  • Obtain process capability data or estimates
  • Assess nominal design performance and impact of variability
  • Calculate probability of satisfying each CTQ

Optimize Design for Value

  • Identify any gaps between design and capability
  • Define a value function to prioritize CTQs
  • Close gaps and maximize value: re-allocate, improve capability, negotiate requirements

Validate Design and Models

  • Validate model accuracy for mean and variability
  • Verify failure rate and reliability targets
  • Verify part and process sigma models

Control

  • Monitor and control key x’s that influence customer CTQ’s
  • Implement statistical process control (SPC) to maintain part/process sigma
  • Refine process capability models and database for use in future projects

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: Critical to Quality, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, DFSS, New Product Development, PLC process, product development, product life cycle, Project Management, six sigma

About Robert Allen

Robert Allen has over 25 years of professional experience in the areas of product development, process improvement and project management. Rob was a key contributor to numerous deployments of lean sigma and project management organizations, most notably with Honeywell and TE Connectivity. Included in Rob’s experience are multiple certifications and over 25 years of practice in the development, teaching, execution, and leadership of product lifecycle, lean product development, DFSS, lean six sigma, project management, systems engineering and supply chain.

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Articles by Rob Allen
in the Product Development and Process Improvement series

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