Design for Lean Six Sigma

Design for Lean Six Sigma (DFLSS) evolved from the competitive crucible of the 1980s and 1990s and is based on four themes that permeated the cultures of excellent Japanese companies:

1. Statistical thinking – While U.S. firms focused on “excellence,” Japanese firms built their product development strategies on statistical quality control. Statistics, as applied to product and service performance, was driven by top leadership and integrated with business strategy.

2. Focus on customer satisfaction – Explicit, well-engineered business processes focused on the Voice of the Customer (VOC).

3. Designing for product/service and process alignment – Alignment was ensured between VOC and new service and product design concepts by using a problem-solving process for overcoming misalignment issues.

4. Concurrent engineering – Greater rigor in the design phase was accompanied by dramatically compressed new product and service development times. Integrating rigor, discipline, and creativity, DFLSS ensures that the development process delivers new services and products that consistently perform at the highest sigma levels possible.