Saturday, April 9, 2011

Design for Six Sigma

DFSS stands for Design for Six Sigma is an approach to designing or re-designing a  new product or service or process with a measurably high sigma-level from day one.Most new products or processes are seen to perform at 2 to 3 sigma level till people learn lessons and improve the process. The intention of DFSS is to launch such new products / processes / service with a process performance of around 4.5 sigma with respect to the customer requirement. This requires a very good understanding of  the customer needs and to design and implement the new offering with a high reliability of delivery before launch.
DFSS at a Glance:

DFSS is an approach and attitude towards delivering new products and services with a high performance as measured by customer critical to quality metrics. Just as the Six Sigma approach has the DMAIC methodology (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) by which processes can be improved, DFSS also follows a structured methodology by which new products / services / processes can be designed and implemented.
 
DMADV (Design, Measure, Analyse, Design, Verify) is one approach used in DFSS. However there are several other models in use. In many engineering design departments, DFSS is regarded as design optimisation, and the IDOV (Identify, Design, Optimise, Verify) methodology prevails, however this is focused very much on final stage engineering optimisation, and may miss many of the issues involved in actually selecting good products and features that will meet customer needs!
 
To deliver a good methodology that is customer focused, encompasses the entire business-to-market process, and deals effectively with both products and services.

Difference between Six Sigma and DFSS

Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology, whereas DFSS is centred on designing new products / services processes. The main differences are that Six Sigma focuses on one or two CTQ (Critical To Quality) metrics, looks at processes, and aims to improve the CTQ performance by about +1 process-sigma at a time. In contrast, DFSS focuses on every single CTQ that matters to the customer, and aims to bring forth a new product /service / process with a performance of about 4.5 sigma from the start.
 
Other differences are that DFSS projects are often much larger and take longer, and are often based on a long term business need for new products / services / processes rather than a short term need to fix a customer problem.
 


4 comments:

  1. Six Sigma is what will teach you how to improve time and performance management, motivate employees, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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  2. Very Nice and informative blog! Thanks for sharing. Keep Posting.
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