Tag: DFSS

The value and impact that a solid Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) approach can bring to an IT business is well known. While many organizations understand the relationship between DFSS and their own project management approach, what they often miss is attention to the foundational concepts of Lean and DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) […]

In the development phase of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), practitioners who work in domains such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, foods, material composition and semiconductors frequently deal with experiments to determine optimal ingredient mixtures for desired products. The factors in a mixture experiment are the ingredients or components of a mixture, and the response is […]

Sarbanes-Oxley is a law passed in 2002 by the U.S. Congress in response to a series of accounting scandals that impacted several major corporations. The act contains a number of sections, or titles, that require certain activities related to registering with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), as well as requirements related to financial […]

While several factors can drive the success or failure of a Six Sigma project, experienced project managers cite resource planning or allocation of resources as the greatest driver of success for larger projects. All three types of resources – materials, technology and people – must be used effectively. In particular, human resource management plays a […]

While there are more than a few connections between the Six Sigma DMAIC roadmap and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), some practitioners may not be aware of the connections between CMMI and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). CMMI has four process categories, each contains several process areas that are associated with a maturity level (Table […]

Since 2007, the Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) has made efforts to institutionalize a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. The goal to have TACOM LCMC associates at every level advocate, pursue and implement continuous process improvement methods through the promulgation of Lean Six Sigma across the command is a […]

Making a single DMAIC-DFSS roadmap elicits numerous coexistence and integration questions. Nonetheless, a combined core roadmap is possible.

In a production and development environment, Six Sigma attempts to reduce rework from the start, cutting down on costs and development cycle time. Compared to the try-fail method, in which practitioners usually generate thousands of ideas before finding a really useful concept for developing a new product or service, Six Sigma’s systematic approach may be […]

One of the most popular metrics used in assessing Six Sigma projects, both DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), is defects per million opportunities (DPMO). This measurement is the average number of defects per unit observed during an average production run divided by the number of opportunities for making […]

A discussion about an ideal IT system often centers on user friendliness, system reliability, and implementation on time and on budget. These discussions should also include how to create more business value through the development of systems following a disciplined, fact based approach with a clear customer focus. For example, consider a telecom provider who […]

“99.44 percent pure” “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” “The ultimate driving machine” “We bring good things to life” For recent generations of Americans, the slogans above have become synonymous with the high-profile brands they represent. But these words are not simply clever taglines. They […]

“As technology moves more and more into the very fabric of our existence, the real-time existence of consumers and businesses and the economy, the reliability of systems will need to reach the level of dial-tone. Consequently, the techniques used to develop systems, the quality of these systems, and the demands on the performance of these […]

Every organization faces the daunting task of executing projects that meet or exceed the expectations of its customers. That makes project management a key component of most enterprises, regardless of the business sector. Yet project management is not always met with organization-wide satisfaction. One major reason is that many project management offices (PMOs) are replicated […]

As the acceptance of Six Sigma grows and penetrates deeper into business culture, organizations begin to question when a process will benefit from a Six Sigma methodology that provides improvement (DMAIC) versus one that offers a new design (DMEDI). While the answer is clear to veteran Six Sigma practitioners, it is not so clear to […]

Digital check processing. Fraud detection. Compliance monitoring. Trading floor analytics. These are all integral functions for many modern financial service institutions. And all have one thing in common – they require a huge amount of computing power. One approach to providing fast responses even with highly complex computations is distributed computing, or creating a shared compute […]

The future is knocking at the door of the U.S. banking industry. But how do banks get the future into their daily operations? More and more banks are using Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to help them to take full advantage of such modern processes as electronic check presentment, thereby reducing expenses and increasing profits. […]

While not as glamorous as designing a new product, the last step in an IDOV project – the Validate phase – can ensure the long-term success of the project and your customer’s satisfaction.

The goal in product design or business process engineering is to create products or processes that are insensitive to the sources of variation that inhibit their intended function. The design phase in the product development process is a crucial activity since this is when most downstream production and quality problems are locked-in. As a consequence, […]

Many software organizations are beginning to use Six Sigma, and are finding that they need to rationalize its relationship to the standard software development life cycle process. A number of issues and alternatives arise when this need is addressed. Roadmaps and Software Development Life Cycles (SDLC) Six Sigma includes two complementary roadmaps. The first of […]

As banking operations and check processing enters the 21st Century, so too the ways financial institutions design processes enters a new age. Long gone are the days of trial-and-error in bringing new products, services or technologies to market. Companies need to be able to implement solutions effectively – the first time – to provide superior customer […]

Interest in Six Sigma is growing rapidly within the professional project management community, and the most common question coming from that group is something like “How does Six Sigma relate to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK)?” Six Sigma and PMBoK do have connections, similarities and distinctions. Before diving into specifics, a little background […]

This book provides step-by-step guidance on how to use the Six Sigma DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify) methodology to design products, services, and processes that reliably meet customers’ and stakeholders’ requirements.

“Why bother about process improvement? Let’s do it right the first time. We don’t need process improvement. We have to implement DFSS!” This is a common theme from engineering people in Six Sigma deployments. A common response from practitioners is that DMAIC should be implemented first; experience with the methodology should come before the introduction […]