Program Level Design for Six Sigma

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) has been an initiative within product development for over 5 years now. Most companies start out implementing DFSS by using a collection of tools within marketing and engineering. Even though this often yields isolated, or localized improvement in the development of the product, overall product performance, cost, and producibility are not significantly improved at launch. Furthermore, focus on the customer delighters is often neglected, or even lost. DFSS needs to be recognized as a process within the product development process and applied at the program level to fully realize its total potential value. This paper will identify key issues that need to be addressed to achieve the full value from DFSS implementation.