Six Sigma uses the DMAIC cycle to ensure product quality. The first and most important step is that of Defining the design requirements. When you think of a company with quality products, do you think about the challenges they face each day, or the software they use? Quality is not about how a firm sees itself and its own challenges, quality is about inter-firm competition and what the customer sees.
I personally enjoy chocolate, and I want to pay someone to give me the best chocolate bar ever. Well maybe you rushed off at the sound of pay and immediately brought back a fine 60% cacao bar imported from italy and dipped in the nectar of the gods. The problem is you didn’t listen to my needs and wants.
I want a chocolate bar that is sweet and melts in my mouth. I hope there’s something unique about it too. Actually I think that salty food is tasty as well, maybe you could make me french fires?
Being a wise chocolatier, you reply that you will translate my requirements into measurable quantities and then deliver me the finest chocolate far surpassing any competition. Your engineer would take my sweetness level to mean an exact percentage of cacao. In order for the chocolate to melt, he knows I have an abnormally low body temperature which requires fats that melt at 97.8F. I didn’t tell you that I want the bar to be solid before eating it, but you assumed that. Therefore, you know the melting temperature must be above 80F. And as for french fries, you decline, but peanuts are a great additive.
You set up several measurements – cacao percentage, melt temperature, and peanut count – based on my input. Now these can be measured and returned to me for feedback in the measure phase, coming next.
So you see, definitions are critically important steps. Without understanding product requirements from a customer viewpoint, a company cannot succeed in the long term. Competition is fierce, so pick the customers you want, ignore those you want to avoid, and define what they need!
by Brian Oliver
Brian holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of California, Irvine