Applying Design for Six Sigma to Software and Hardware Systems

The Practical, Example-Rich Guide to Building Better Systems, Software, and Hardware with DFSS

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) offers engineers powerful opportunities to develop more successful systems, software, hardware, and processes. In Applying Design for Six Sigma to Software and Hardware Systems , two leading experts offer a realistic, step-by-step process for succeeding with DFSS. Their clear, start-to-finish roadmap is designed for successfully developing complex high-technology products and systems that require both software and hardware development.

Drawing on their unsurpassed experience leading Six Sigma at Motorola, the authors cover the entire project lifecycle, from business case through scheduling, customer-driven requirements gathering through execution. They provide real-world examples for applying their techniques to software alone, hardware alone, and systems composed of both. Product developers will find proven job aids and specific guidance about what teams and team members need to do at every stage.

Using this book’s integrated, systems approach, marketers, software professionals, and hardware developers can converge all their efforts on what really matters: addressing the customer’s true needs.

Learn how to

• Ensure that your entire team shares a solid understanding of customer needs
• Define measurable critical parameters that reflect customer requirements
• Thoroughly assess business case risk and opportunity in the context of product roadmaps and portfolios
• Prioritize development decisions and scheduling in the face of resource constraints
• Flow critical parameters down to quantifiable, verifiable requirements for every sub-process, subsystem, and component
• Use predictive engineering and advanced optimization to build products that robustly handle variations in manufacturing and usage
• Verify system capabilities and reliability based on pilots or early production samples
• Master new statistical techniques for ensuring that supply chains deliver on time, with minimal inventory
• Choose the right DFSS tools, using the authors’ step-by-step flowchart

If you’re an engineer involved in developing any new technology solution, this book will help you reflect the real Voice of the Customer, achieve better results faster, and eliminate fingerpointing.

About the Web Site The accompanying Web site, sigmaexperts.com/dfss, provides an interactive DFSS flowchart, templates, exercises, examples, and tools.

Eric Maass has thirty years of experience with Motorola, ranging from research and development through manufacturing, to director of operations for a $160 million business and director of design and systems engineering for Motorola’s RF Products Division. Dr.Maass was a cofounder of the Six Sigma methods at Motorola, and was a key advocate for the focus on variance reduction; his article on a “Strategy to Reduce Variance” was published in 1987, the year that Motorola announced Six Sigma. He codeveloped a patented method for multiple response optimization that has resulted in over 60 first-pass successful new products, and most recently has been the lead Master Black Belt for Design for Six Sigma at Motorola. He coauthored the Handbook of Fiber Optic Data Communication and a variety of chapters in books and articles ranging from concept selection to augmentation of design of experiments to multiple response optimization to advanced decision-making methods. Dr. Maass’s other accomplishments include driving the turnaround of the Logic Division from “virtual chapter 11” to second-most profitable division (of 22 divisions) in two years, and he also won the contract for Freescale Semiconductor’s largest customer, Qualcomm. Dr. Maass has a rather diverse educational background, with a B.A. in biological sciences, an M.S. in chemical and biomedical engineering, a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, and nearly thirty years’ experience in electrical engineering. Dr. Maass is currently consulting with and advising several companies and institutions including Motorola, Arizona State University, Oracle, and Eaton.

Patricia McNair is the director of Motorola’s software Design for Six Sigma program and a Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt. She served as cochair of the Software Development Consortium and program director of the Motorola Six Sigma Software Academy. She travels internationally to various countries including France, England, China, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Brazil, and many others for consulting and training of Motorola engineers.
She spent more than twenty-five years in software and systems engineering roles including systems engineering manager, design engineer manager, architect and requirements lead, senior process manager, certified SEI instructor for the introduction to CMMI, certified Six Sigma black belt, and authorized SEI CBA IPI lead assessor for various companies such as Motorola, GE Healthcare, and IBM Federal Systems, where she worked through and managed all phases of a software development life cycle, from requirement gathering, design, development, and implementation, to production and support.
She has served as an adjunct professor at De Paul University in Chicago, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and at the University of Phoenix.
She holds an M.S. in computer science from the State University of New York at Binghamton and an MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.