Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a powerful methodology aimed at tackling core products/services and process design and development issues.
 
Across industries, it is interesting to note that 80% of all defects are “designed in”. Application of DFSS concepts enables people responsible for designing to foresee and eliminate potential defects before and during the design process thus ensuring a far robust and fault free design.
 
In the world of service-based businesses, including health care and financial services, process design projects are frequently outsourced and often don’t take into account inherent expertise in the organization. As a result, such organizations end up spending time and money fixing processes that were not designed with their best interests in mind.
As can be seen, DFSS has application in both manufacturing and services space and organizations have used these for introducing nearly defect free new/revised products/services in market, designing new plant / departmental layouts, significantly enhancing internal service levels by redesigning/ designing key the internal services and their relevant processes.

Application of a DFSS as a structured methodology significantly minimizes the risk of failure for new/product introductions besides ensuring viable design projects are continued in development portfolio. Additionally using concepts of concurrent engineering where all key departments work as a cross-functional team, ensure high speed in the development process besides reducing the defect levels due to lesser miscommunication.
 

• Assess - Clarify primary strategic objectives and align those objectives with core business improvement strategies.
• Plan and Design - Design the internal infrastructure to guide, measure and enable the program's ultimate success.
• Enable - Train business leaders and practitioners in the methodologies best suited to their goals.
• Sustain and Internalize - Empower clients to succeed long-term.

This business improvement process may be different for large organizations than for smaller or departmental deployments, but the result is always the same - BMGI helps their clients uncover their greatest opportunities for improvement and devise a strategy for accomplishing them.

 
Applications where organizations can apply DFSS for ensuring robust quality outputs and optimal investments include:

• Designing / redesigning systems / sub-systems and parts to ensure robust designs for flawless operations in hands of customer besides ensuring smooth manufacturability and future serviceability
• Designing/ redesigning services for high customer satisfaction and consistent delivery to clients

• Designing / Redesigning plant layouts / equipment choices for ensuring flawless manufacturability
• Designing / Redesigning departments / layouts / infrastructure for ensuring flawless customer servicing
• Integrating DFSS tools into existing New Product Development framework/ New Process Development framework

 
Redesigning internal processes to substantially improve the service levels of departments