Page 94 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

Product Development Process and Design for Six Sigma 69

Information flows

Work team

Individual member
Figure 3.7 Typical product development work mechanism.

■ With the flow of information from one place to another, the informa-
tion might be misunderstood and distorted; because people have dif-
ferent backgrounds, a lot of meanings are lost in the translation.
■ The information may not flow as it should. Perhaps some team or
person did some test, performed some analysis, and made some
design changes, but the other related people didn’t get this informa-
tion. This will create a lot of technical bugs and inconsistencies in
the design.
■ The flow of the information could be very slow and very ineffective.

Information and knowledge creation. In the product development
process, there are some design tasks for which no ready solutions can
be pulled from somewhere. These tasks necessitate creating new infor-
mation and new knowledge. Here are some of the scenarios:
■ Resolution of some technical bottlenecks that nobody has accom-
plished before: For example, the fuel efficiency of the internal com-
bustion engine is low, and with the increasing petroleum price, this
technical difficulty needs to be resolved.
■ Development of the new generation of product: We want to drasti-
cally improve our product’s performance, cost, and so on to move