Page 138 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Quality Function Deployment 113

Hows should be added so that the blank or weak rows are changed to
stronger rows.
• Conflicts: Determine whether the technical competitive assessment is
in conflict with the customer competitive assessment.
• Significance: Determine which Hows are significant, that is, those that
relate to many customer attributes, safety and regulatory issues, and
internal company requirements.
• Eye-opener opportunities: If 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: The team should take the opportunity to incorporate the
competitor’s highly rated Hows. It is advisable for the team to modify
and incorporate benchmarking and not resort to creation.

6.7 Example

This example is a QFD study conducted by a DFSS team. The following are
highlights of the QFD example.

Project Objective
Design a global commercial process with Six Sigma performance.

Project Problem Statement

• Sales cycle time (lead generation to full customer setup) exceeds 182
business days. Internal and external customer specifications range from
1 to 72 business days.
• Only 54 percent of customer service requests are closed by the com-
mitment date. The customers expect 100 percent of their service
requests to be completed on time.
• None of the commercial processes is standard or is Six Sigma capable.

Business Case
• There is no consistent, global process for selling to, setting up, and
servicing accounts.
• Current sales and customer service information management systems do
not enable a measurement of accuracy and timeliness on a global basis.
• Enterprise-wide customer care is a must be requirement; failure to
improve the process threatens growth and retention of the portfolio.