SIX SIGMA FUNDAMENTALS - Software Design for Six-Sigma: A Roadmap for Excellence - page 169

DFSS is a disciplined methodology with a collection of tools to ensure that products
and processes are developed systematically to provide reliable results that exceed
customer requirements. A key function of DFSS is to understand and prioritize
the needs, wants, and desires of customers and to translate those requirements into
products and processes that will consistently meet those needs. The DFSS tool set
can be used in support of major new software product development initiatives, or
in stand-alone situations to ensure that proper decisions are made. DFSS is a highly
discipline approach to embedding the principle of Six Sigma as possible in the design
and development process. When a problem is not discovered until well into the
product life cycle, the costs to make a change, not to mention the intangible costs,
such as customer dissatisfaction, are considerable (Figure 1.2).
The rest of this topic is devoted to explaining and demonstrating the DFSS tools and
methodology. Chapter 8 is the introductory chapter for DFSS, giving the overview for
DFSS theory; DFSS-gated process, and DFSS application. Chapter 9 provides a de-
tailed description about how to deploy DFSS in a software development organization,
covering the training, organization support, financial management, and deployment
strategy. Chapter 11 provides a very detailed “road map” of the whole software DFSS
project execution, which includes an in-depth description of the DFSS stages, task
management, scorecards, and how to integrate all DFSS methods into developmental
stages. Chapters 12 through 19 provide detailed descriptions with examples on all of
the major methods and tools used in DFSS.

7.12 SUMMARY

The term “Six Sigma” is heard often today. Suppliers offer Six Sigma as an incentive
to buy; customers demand Six Sigma compliance to remain on authorized vendor
lists. It was known that it has to do with quality, and obviously something to do
with statistics, but what exactly is it? Six Sigma is a lot of things: a methodology, a
philosophy, an exercise in statistics, and a way of doing business, a tool for improving
quality. Six Sigma is only one of several tools and processes that an organization needs
to use to achieve world-class quality. Six Sigma places an emphasis on identifying
and eliminating defects from one's products, sales quotations, and proposals to a
customer or a paper presented at a conference. The goal is to improve one's processes
by eliminating waste and opportunity for waste so much that mistakes are nearly
impossible. The goal of a process that is Six Sigma good is a defect rate of only a
few parts per million. Not 99% good, not even 99.9% good, but 99.999996% good.
In this chapter, we have explained what 6 is and how it has evolved over time.

We explained how it is a process-based methodology and introduced the reader to
process modeling with a high-level overview of IPO, process mapping, value stream
mapping and value analysis, as well as BPMS. we discussed the criticality of under-
standing the measurements of the process or system and how this is accomplished
with measurement systems analysis (MSA). Once we understand the goodness of our
measures, we can evaluate the capability of the process to meet customer require-
ments and can demonstrate what is 6

σ

σ

capability. Next we moved into an explanation