Design for Six Sigma

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is not a methodology in and of itself. Rather, DFSS is a set of best practices and tools which, when integrated into a product / service development process, increases your organization's ability to meet your customers' requirements in a timely, cost-effective manner.

As the name suggests, DFSS is about design. DFSS saves costs in part because the cost of making a change increases exponentially during the lifecycle of a development project (as shown above).

When you have completed this course, you will have a solid general knowledge of the tools, methods and best practices necessary for developing products and processes that can meet Six Sigma levels of quality.

Learning Objectives

The overall objective of this course to introduce you to the best practices and methodologies that are essential for developing product or process designs that meet customer requirements at the highest possible level of quality.

• Communicate using Design for Six Sigma concepts.
• Identify areas within your existing development process where DFSS is needed.
• Integrate DFSS into your existing development process.
• Select optimal product or process design concepts.
• Use analytical and experimental methods to develop robust and reliable designs.
• Modify designs for optimal performance based on variability of the inputs and desired outputs.
• Verify that the designs meet the requirements at the desired level of performance.
• Employ your DFSS skills to lead a successful development project delivering meaningful results to the organization.

To successfully complete this course, you must review all of the lessons and complete all of the quiz modules.

Course Structure

This course consists of six sessions, each of which is a collection of related lessons.

Individual lessons also include simulations, toolsets and interactive practice exercises. Each session ends with an interactive quiz to test your knowledge.

The course is presented in a logical sequence to follow the Define-Concept-Design-Optimize-Verify (DCDOV) representation of DFSS.

At the core of the course are the principles of understanding customer requirements, translation of requirements (QFD), design concept generation and evaluation, and development of predictive transfer functions.

The DFSS course also covers design optimization, robust design, and incorporates some Lean concepts (e.g., continuous flow, identifying waste, value stream maps) for Design for Lean Six Sigma (DfLSS). Process Playground™, online discrete simulation tool, is now available for free in the Optimize session of both versions of the DFSS course.

On every page, you have access to a variety of helpful learning tools, from an online encyclopedia to a notes tab to support links. You can use the course navigation map to move through the course in a linear fashion or you can skip around and explore topics as you see fit.