Bottom-up integration of quality in new product development using systems engineering

Abstract

Designers and manufacturers of modern complex systems have to account for both explicit and implicit customer requirements. Although, the voice of customer (VOC) provides adequate information for a new design, its integration with complex socio-technical systems are vital for the completeness of the design, where the product quality is judged by the extent to which the VOC is addressed. This dictates the product designer to effectively translate and balance the requirements from all the stakeholders. This paper presents bottom-up integration of quality through the hierarchy of new product development steps using a synergy of design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Systems Engineering (SE) approaches. Thereby covering the quality aspects through DFSS and systems concept through SE. Embedding of SE approach to DFSS’s identify, design, optimise and validate (IDOV) methodology can result in an effective translation of the voice of all stake holders, and hence better coverage of quality.