Page 352 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

312 Chapter Ten

and they work differently. The frequently encountered processes can be
classified into the following categories:
• Product design and development
• Manufacturing or production
• Office or transaction
• Service factory
• Pure service shop
• Retail service store
• Professional service
• Telephone service
• Project shop
• Logistics and distribution
• Transportation service
• Purchasing and supply chain
Each category has distinct features, and we discuss each in detail.

10.3.1 Product Design and Development Process

For the manufacturing industry, product design and development is a key
process, and it is also usually the most technically sophisticated, costly, and
time-consuming process. For the service industry, the product design and
development process does exist, but its importance and features vary from
industry to industry. For the movie industry, the products are films. Here the
product development process is clearly very important and creativity is very
important; however, mass production is simply the duplication of films. The
software industry is also very product oriented; the products are clearly the
software, and the product development process is extremely important. For
the health-care industry, the service product can be defined as diagnosis-
treatment-care; this diagnosis-treatment-care planning process can be
treated as a product development process. The plan will be different for each
patient, and it will be developed quickly after the patient is admitted and
might be changed due to changing circumstances.

Processes in product design and development include the conceptual and
detailed design of products by designers. Design focuses on issues such as
functionality of the product as well as aesthetics and ease of manufacture.
Other tasks in product development may include building and testing of
prototypes using various test equipment and analysis of candidate designs.
Common goals in product design and development processes include
shortening the required time to design new products, more frequent intro-
duction of new designs, producing designs that are more innovative while