Design for Six Sigma (DFSS): lessons learned from world-class companies

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a powerful approach for designing products, processes and services to meet the needs and expectations of the customer while driving down quality costs. It involves the utilisation of powerful and useful statistical tools to predict and improve quality before building prototypes. This paper attempts to study DFSS and the associated experiences of world-class companies. For this purpose, DFSS methodologies are introduced and compared with Six Sigma methodology. The DFSS process is demonstrated and some examples of world-class companies are presented. Finally, some implementation obstacles are addressed and the DFSS training programme is described and emphasised. The findings imply that the methodologies for DFSS are enormous and companies employ different methodologies. Also, it has been found that the role of project leaders is essential for the success of projects and the training programme offered in DFSS should be flexible.