TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter provides an introduction to Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) theory, implementation processes, and applications. The material presented herein is intended to give the reader an understanding of what DFSS is and of its uses and benefits. After reading this chapter, readers should have a sufficient knowledge of DFSS to assess how it could be used in relation to their jobs and to identify their needs for further learning.
The theoretical foundation for DFSS comes from several sources:
Customer-oriented design
System design and creative design
Taguchi method and "fire-prevention" philosophy
The customer-oriented design is a development process of transforming customers' wants into design solutions that are useful to the customer. In simple words, customer-oriented design translates the voice of the customer (VOC) into products and services. Firms listening to the VOC have discovered that the financial results are tremendous, with returns occurring roughly one to two years after deployment. Companies as varied as Cummins, 3M, Samsung, and Bank of America are publicized examples. Bank of America alone noted that it has captured over a billion dollars due to added revenue generation.
Several important methods that relate to customer-oriented design originated from Japan, including quality function deployment (QFD) (Cohen, 1988, 1995), the Kano model, and the KJ method. Quality function deployment is a work template that can be used to derive product design parameters and specifications from the voices of customers. The voices of customers are usually obtained from customer surveys,...
