What to look for in a Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) program

Author: Ashok Muthuswamy

A proven approach to pursue DFSS is through DMADV, which stands for Design, Measure, Analyze,
Design and Verify.

DMADV can be split into two halves as noted below

 Aspect 1:DMA: Understanding customer needs and identifying mapping design requirements
 Aspect 2: DV: Optimizing the product design to deliver the best possible output

Aspect 1:

The phases DMA really deals with defining the design project, understanding the business needs,
capturing the customer needs using VOC, Kano Analysis, Surveys, Interviews, etc., developing high level
design requirements and identifying which of those design requirements are important for fulfilling
customer needs using QFD. Once that is done, we will know what are the key design features we need
to have, well in advance of actual design. This is called “front-loading’ the pain. Key reason for failure of
most of the product design programs is that customer needs are not captured well, and design is rushed
to come up with something that couldn’t be sold in the market place.

Aspect 2:

The phases D and V deals with analyzing various design options and identifying the best possible option
that provides the right output, whether it is yield, quality, productivity, ease of manufacturability, etc.
We will be using various tools such as Design of Experiments, Quality Loss Function, Taguchi’s Robust
Product Design, etc., to accomplish the objectives of this aspect.

A DFSS program should just concentrate on the two aspects mentioned above. These two aspects
should intervene at the right time to provide focus as well as optimization, without strait-jacketing the
intellectual processes involved in product design.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) vs. DFSS

There are some commonalities between LSS and DFSS. That said, LSS provides a set of tools to be used in
a sequence to find and prioritize root causes of issues in an existing situation and then attack the key
root causes that will result in improvement.

However, DFSS is about producing a process or product that is “first time right” and meets the needs of
the customer. It provides framework to understand customer requirement and develop functions for
new products based on those requirements, challenge existing assumptions, develop, test and evaluate
proposals, and come up with a robust design.