Page 20 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

xviii Preface to the First Edition

Chapter 7 presents the quality function deployment method, a pow-
erful method to guide and plan design activities to achieve customer
desires. QFD was originally developed in Japan and is now widely used
all over the world.
Chapter 8 introduces the axiomatic design method. The axiomatic
design method is a relatively new method developed at MIT. It gives
some very powerful guidelines (axioms) for “what is a good system design”
and “what is a weak system design.” Weak designs are often featured by
complicated mutual interactions, coupling, nonindependence, and exces-
sive complexity. Good designs are often featured by clear and simple
relationship between design parameters and product functions, and ele-
gant simplicity. Axiomatic design principles can help DFSS project to
reduce design vulnerabilities and therefore to achieve optimized designs.
Chapter 9 presents the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ),
which was developed in the former Soviet Union. TRIZ is a very pow-
erful method that makes innovation a routine activity. It is based on an
enormous amount of research worldwide on successful patents and
inventions. It has a wide selection of methods and knowledge base to
create inventive solutions for difficult design problems. This chapter
provides a very detailed description of TRIZ and a large number of
examples. TRIZ can help the DFSS team to think “outside of the box”
and conceive innovative design solutions.
Chapter 10 discusses “Design for X” which includes “design for man-
ufacturing and assembly,”“design for reliability,” and many others. Design
for X is a collection of very useful methods to make sound design for all
purposes.
Chapter 11 discusses failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA). FMEA
is a very important design review method to eliminate potential failures
in the design stage. We discuss all important aspects of FMEA, and also
the difference between design FMEA and process FMEA. The objective
of FMEA is to mitigate risks to improve the quality of the DFSS project.
Chapter 12 gives a very detailed discussion of a powerful and popu-
lar statistical method, design of experiment method (DOE). DOE can be
used for transfer function detailing and optimization in a DFSS project.
In this chapter, we focus our discussion on the workhorses of DOE, that
is, the most frequently used DOE methods, such as full factorial design
and fractional factorial design. In this chapter, detailed step-by-step
instructions and many worked out examples are given.
Chapters 13 to 15 discuss the Taguchi method. Chapter 13 discusses
Taguchi’s orthogonal array experiment and data analysis. Chapter 14
gives very detailed descriptions on all important aspects of the Taguchi
method, such as loss function, signal-to-noise ratio, inner-outer array,
control factors, and noise factors. It also gives a detailed description on
how to use Taguchi parameter design to achieve robustness in design.