Page 268 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

238 Chapter Eight

axiomatic design, a coupled system may result from violation of
axiom 1 and system complexity due to the violation of axiom 2.
■ Operational vulnerabilities. These lead to lack of robustness at the
operational level, specifically, in the use environment and over the
system life cycle, when the system is subjected to noise factors such
as customer use or abuse, degradation, and piece-to-piece variation
(see Chaps. 13 to 15).

The objective of this book is to develop a DFSS methodology that
provides solution methods to the two major categories of vulnerabili-
ties listed above. El-Haik (2005) expanded on these premises and
developed the theoretical and conceptual framework within DFSS. In
addition, El-Haik* and Roy (2005) developed the service side of Design
of Six Sigma roadmap for excellence.

8.2 Why Axiomatic Design Is Needed
Design and its realization via manufacturing and production can be
defined as sets of processes and activities that transform customers’
wants into design solutions that are useful to society. These processes
are carried over several phases starting from the concept phase. In the
concept phase, conceiving, evaluating, and selecting good design solu-
tions are tasks with enormous consequences. It is inevitable that the
design and manufacturing organizations need to conceive healthy sys-
tems with no or minimal vulnerabilities in one development cycle.
Companies usually operate in two modes:

■ Fire prevention—conceiving feasible and healthy conceptual entities
with no or minimal conceptual vulnerabilities
■ Firefighting—problem solving such that systems can live with min-
imal operational vulnerabilities

Unfortunately, the latter mode consumes the largest portion of the
organization’s human and nonhuman resources.
The crown of our DFSS theory is the methods of axiomatic design and
robust design. These two methods in conjunction with the rest of this
book, provide a comprehensive DFSS approach that allows companies to
work only in the first mode, which, in turn, opens the door to drastically
improve business activities (products and processes) in a way that min-
imizes waste and resources while increasing customer satisfaction. It
is a process that uses statistical techniques and conceptual methods to
drive for results by supplementing means for decision making.

*El-Haik, B. and Roy, D., Service Design For Six Sigma: A Roadmap to excellence, John
Wiley & Sons, 2005.