Page 42 - Six Sigma for electronics design and manufacturing

The Nature of Six Sigma and Its Connectivity to Other Quality Tools
Matrix
Correlation
Strong Relationship = 5
Medium Relationship = 3
Product
Weak Relationship = 1
Characteristics
M
P I 13
Customer Relationship O Competitive
R
Needs Matrix T Analysis
A
N
C
E
Product
Specifications
Figure 1.2 QFD product planning matrix.
The relation between the customer needs and the product charac-
teristics can be considered by the QFD team as having one of four
states: strong, medium, weak, or none. Each customer need is given
an importance ranking, and that ranking is multiplied by the rela-
tionship to generate a total score for each of the product design char-
acteristics. In some cases, the importance ranking could further be
modified by the marketing emphasis on that customer need. For ex-
ample, lighter weight of a product might be considered an important
customer need, and customer feedback indicated it should be ranked
as medium in importance, for a value of 5. Marketing managers might
decide that the new product could compete better if they could empha-
size this attribute as a sales point. The importance level could be mul-
tiplied by a factor of two, increasing its value to 10. In this manner,
the design of the product is forced to be of lighter weight than would
otherwise be indicated by the customer’s wishes.
A high characteristic total score indicates that the design character-
istic is important and the related specification should be enhanced, ei-
ther in the positive or negative direction, depending on the direction
of “goodness” of the specification. A low score indicates that the speci-
fication of the current product design is adequate, and should be left
alone or even widened or decreased in value. In this manner, QFD