Page 142 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

Design for Six Sigma Deployment 117

while awaiting data, funding, and/or approval protocols. A prioritiza-
tion scheme should also be devised to schedule project launch.
In summary, and on the DFSS project side, the following should be
part of the deployment strategy:

■ Number and criteria of projects on the redesign side. Short-term
DFSS project source.
■ Number and criteria of projects on the design side. Long-term
DFSS project source.
■ Project complexity. Depending on the interrelationships and cou-
pling (coupling is an axiomatic design term; see Chap. 8) within and
among design entities, projects size will increase and having more
than one black belt, say, a black belt team, would be more than jus-
tified. This will avoid suboptimizing components and subprocesses
reaching out to higher hierarchical levels and stressing system engi-
neering thinking. From this perspective, project matching and scal-
ability appropriate to the black belts will become more significant. In
the team approach, the following must be decided:
Black belt team size.
Black belt workload.
Team dynamics to reflect the complex interrelationships so that
design decisions are negotiated among the team to achieve the
best resolution and/or compromise based on some sequence judged
by coupling and complexity.
Black belt certification.
Interests of the stockholders involved should be identified and dealt
with accordingly by the black belt team. We found that Venn dia-
grams are useful identification tools to facilitate the analysis (see
Fig. 4.2). The team should capitalize on the common interests rep-
resented by the common intersection set of interests.
■ Project identification and selection approach.
■ Project scoping approach. The usual linear CTQ flowdown used in
DMAIC is successful only when coupling absence is assured, that is,
one-to-one mapping between requirements and design parameters is
accomplished per axiom 1 of the axiomatic design method (see Chap. 8).
Otherwise, more involved scoping schemes must be employed.
■ Project prioritization scheme. The selection and scoping approaches
usually yield project ideas that are further refined in a project char-
ter. Depending on the size of the project list, a prioritization scheme
may be needed. These schemes range in complexity and involvement.
Simple schemes like the one depicted in Fig. 4.3 are usually effective.
High-leverage projects are in the upper right quadrant denoted as