Page 256 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

226 Chapter Seven

and moved to the next phase for further cascading and design detailing.
The set of HOWs that do not require any special focus are not tracked
to allow for the most effective use of team resources. This also ensures
that HOWs critical to meeting the customer attributes receive the opti-
mum allocation of time and resources as early as possible.

7.7 QFD Analysis

Completion of the first QFD house of quality may give the DFSS team
a false impression that their job is completed. In reality, all their work
to this point has been to create a tool that will guide future efforts
toward deploying the VOC into the design. QFD matrix analysis in
every phase will lead to the identification of design weaknesses, which
must be dealt with as potential strength opportunities to be “best in
class.” A relatively simple procedure for analyzing the HOQ phase is
provided below:

■ Blank or weak columns. HOWs that don’t strongly relate to any
customer attribute.
■ Blank or weak rows. Customer attributes that are not being strongly
addressed by a HOW.
■ Conflicts. Technical competitive assessment that is in conflict with
customer competitive assessment.
■ Significance. HOWs that relate to many customer attributes, safe-
ty/regulatory, and internal company requirements.
■ “Eye opener” opportunities. The team’s company and competitors
are doing poorly. The DFSS team should seize the opportunity to
deliver on these sales points, which may be treated as delighters in
the Kano model initially.
■ Benchmarking. Opportunities to incorporate the competitor’s highly
rated HOWs. The team should modify and incorporate using bench-
marking and not resort to creation.
■ Deployment. Significant HOWs that need further deployment and
work in phase 2, design parameters deployment.

7.8 QFD Example
The QFD example* is adapted with some alterations to illustrate the
QFD diagnostics by a DFSS team.

*The example is contributed by Dave Roy, master black belt of Textron Inc.