Implementing Design for Six Sigma in large Swedish product developing organisations – an interview study

Abstract

As a result of the organisational evolvement towards increased structure in product development (PD), supporting concepts like Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) have arisen. DFSS provides structuring guidelines as well as suggestions regarding tool and technique implementations for PD. Companies’ need for support and structure from such a concept does, however, not always correspond to the real content of the concept. This article examines the DFSS implementation strategy in four organisations to determine which parts of the DFSS concept are being used by companies. Results show that several of the most difficult activities in PD lack concrete support in DFSS. On the other hand, many of the clearly described actions of the concept are already well-operating methods in today's product developing organisations.

Keywords:

• Design for Six Sigma
• DFSS
• product development
• interview study

Acknowledgements

To all the interview respondents at the interviewed companies, many thanks for your time and your patient answers to our questions.