Design For Six Sigma
While designing a new product or service, we come across with a lot of unknowns. But the organic growth the companies need can only be achieved through new products and services that excite the current and potential customers.
Every day, many companies continue to propel new products or services into the market and aim to be successful in spite of many unknowns. The only thing we can be sure of, while designing a product or a service, is that we will be facing a lot more unknowns than we would while improving the existing one.
- Are you guessing what your customers want, or do you know it exactly?
- What are the features that your new product or service should have?
- How do you benchmark in the process of deciding on the levels of these features?
- Are the competing products and services accurately evaluated in your design process?
- What are your losses, as the implementation period of your product takes longer and longer?
- What will be your loss, especially after realizing that the launched product is nothing like you desired? And most important;
- Do you know how to run the processes that design, develop, produce, market, sell and support your new product or service?
All of these questions are few of the many tough questions you need to start answering along with the thought of a new product or service. If you are very close to your customer and you have the processes successful in collecting “the Voice of the Customer (VOC)”, you may not have difficulty in answering the similar questions. However, today, still many companies cannot touch their customers enough; maybe, only to the extent of a market research. This leads the companies to make decisions based on experiences and instincts usually, while creating a new product or service. Thus, the success rate of the new product or service can only be determined after the commercial launching.
However, the organic growth, that the companies require, is only possible through new, creative products and services possessing the qualities that excite both the current and the prospective clients. Your new products or services should meet the defined and undefined needs of your target customers and should be followed by a product launch successful enough to impress the market.
DFSS, which is the acronym for Design for Six Sigma, is an approach that adapts the process improvement concept of Six Sigma to the new products and services, together with the processes that delivers them to the market in order to meet the customer’s expectations. As well as being effective in designing new products and services, DFSS is also effective in redesigning, when the current processes stop functioning the way they are supposed to.
When we take a look at the processes that design the services, we see that they are usually defined more insufficiently compared to the ones in manufacturing. Service processes are less tangible with respect to their structure and their outputs. This presents amazing opportunities to attain competitive advantage in creativity. That is why, DFSS implementations are increasing in the service industry, especially in the field of finance. Through DFSS, the leading companies in the world, from the insurance industry to the automotive industry, aim to:
- Reach the customer information directly,
- Realize the changes in customer expectations and needs sooner,
- Analyze the market with a broader point of view,
- Enable the commitment of various functions of the company to the project,
- Launch the new product or service in a shorter period of time,
- Enable a more effective launch,
- Less inventory costs,
- Less assembly time,
- Less product costs.
DFSS starts with the concept of “Voice of Customer (VOC)” and requires the detailed analysis of the target customer. At the basis of DFSS lies the transformation of customer’s needs and requirements into process requirements, and defect proofing.
As DFSS stands on the concepts and tools of a typical DMAIC approach, it is important to have sufficient experience with Six Sigma. If your company has enough mileage on Six Sigma and if Six Sigma is indispensable for your company, you might think about implementing DFSS while designing new products, services and processes.
For example, DMAIC could be enough for a bank to improve just the credit card delivery period or the errors on the credit card statements, but when a bank launches a new credit card, defining the target customer of the new card, expectations of these customers regarding the card’s specifications, delivery period, the credit card statement structure and the processes delivering all above would be possible through DFSS.
At Results, we help you choose the DFSS methodologies fitting your needs and customize them according to your conditions and requirements to compose an exclusive road map for you. We define the scope of the training you will need to manage your new product, service or process designing projects, and we design the case studies and examples specific to your industry and company.
“Also, we know that there is a very big grey area between doing the most ideal and doing nothing. Although your company is not exercising Six Sigma yet, if you think that your current processes that design your new products or services are not sufficient and efficient enough, there are specific solutions only available at Results. Results will define the most efficient road map and various tools that are based on customer expectations and error proofing.”
More on DFSS
It is certain that Six Sigma is a very powerful tool in improving business processes both in service and in manufacturing industries. At this point, DMAIC methodology of Six Sigma, which is already proved to be effective, has become a standard to improve quality. Lean and Six Sigma provide integrated tools and techniques that increase efficiency and productivity. TRIZ, which is a creative problem solving theory, also supports the formation of more proactive ideas through integration with Six Sigma.
However, design of products and services carries a vital importance; hence the companies go on launching new products without any guaranteed commercial success into the market. Services, on the other hand, usually do not go through a conscious design process conventionally and due to their nature.
- DFSS is a true necessity, when designing a product from scratch or redesigning it becomes imperative.
- Companies, that practice DFSS, have their own unique standards and techniques, which are shaped according to their products and customers’ expectations. In this respect, besides being a methodology, DFSS helps the corporations develop their way of doing business.
- What is aimed at DFSS is, to make sure that the newly designed product is designed and implemented with a high process capability from the very start. Achieving such a high level of quality is only possible by defining and understanding the customers’ expectations and requirements thoroughly before the designing and implementation stages.
- While DMAIC methodology focuses on improving the most critical factors, DFSS evaluates all the critical factors that are important for the customer and the processes that will deliver them to the market, in the scope of design.
- DFSS projects take longer than DMAIC projects, as they are usually based on long-term needs, instead of creating quick solutions in a problematic area.
- Designing or re-designing is possible under any DMAIC project. DFSS has different implementation types, similar to the way that, design levels differ in commercial environments. These could be in many different levels, ranging from, very big projects that involve highly extensive designing of new complicated products and services, to little visits to DFSS under DMAIC projects.
- As, all of the processes are examined under DFSS, the risk of failure of the design to meet the customer’s whole expectations diminishes.
DFSS should comprise the complete life cycle of the new products, that is, from the corporation’s initial decision of product development to the commercial launching of the product. Various DFSS methodologies could be used for this matter. Although these methodologies provide the same basic functions, they are used in different business processes:
- DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify)
- DMADOV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Optimize, Verify)
- DCCDI (Define, Customer Concept, Design and Implement)
- IDOV (Identify, Design, Optimize and Validate)
- DMEDI (Define, Measure, Explore, Develop and Implement)
If we examine the phases of the frequently preferred DMADV methodology; we see that, in the “Define” phase, customer’s needs and requirements are clearly and thoroughly defined as a result of reliable data collected through research. Later on, in the “Measure” phase, these needs are measured and benchmarked against the performance of the competitors or the industry already meeting those needs.
Subsequently, the “Analysis” phase aims to analyze the possible process options to reach the targeted customer specifications. In the “Design” phase, the most suitable process is designed by taking the financial effectiveness of the process into consideration. Finally, in the “Verify” phase, the selected process is evaluated in terms of its performance and the ability to meet the customer’s requirements. In DMADOV, which is another variation of DMADV, there is an extra phase present, and that is “optimization”, which is highly essential for some business processes.
Although, DCCDI, which is another variation of DFSS, is very similar to DMADV with its define, measure and design phases, it includes a last step, which is the “Implementation” phase that deals with the development and commercialization of a product or service.
Distinctively, the IDOV methodology uses advanced simulation modelling and statistical tools to forecast and optimize the design and the performance in addition to the Optimization phase. In DMEDI, which is another frequently preferred methodology, the phases have a similar structure with those of DMADV in terms of concept and techniques, although the terminology of them are different.
In order for DFSS to be more effective, it has to be enabled from the very start of the design process. Dedicated leadership, training for defining measurable targets and commitment of all related individuals are essential for a better implementation. After the implementation is completed, the new product or service has to be handed over to the process owner with all the factors critical to quality and a system to track them.
Results
will determine the most appropriate of the above mentioned methodologies for you, customize the selected methodology in the most suitable manner for you, and if needed, set up a structure that has a simple and manageable start with an increasing effectiveness in the course of time.