DFSS AND RM

DFSS AND R&M

R&M's goal is to make sure that the machinery/tool delivered to the customer meets or exceeds its requirements. DFSS, on the other hand, is the methodology that controls the process for satisfying the customer's expectations early on in the product development cycle. This is very important since in R&M the reliability matrix actually attempts to quantify the initial product vision with the customer's requirements.

Having said that, we must also recognize that quite often in product development we do not have all the answers. In fact, quite often we are on a fuzzy front end. This is where DFSS offers its greatest contribution. That is, with the process knowledge of DFSS, the engineer not only will be aware but also will make sure that the appropriate design fits within both the customer's and the organization's goals.

DFSS may be applied in an original design, which involves elaborating original solutions for a given task; adaptive design, which involves adapting a known system to a changed task or evolving a significant subsystem of a current product; variant design, which involves varying parameters of certain aspects of a product to develop a new or more robust design; and redesign, which implies any of the items just mentioned. A redesign is not a variant design, rather it implies that a product already exists that is perceived to fall short in some criteria, and a new solution is needed. The new solution can be developed through any of the above approaches. In fact, it is often difficult to argue against the maxim that all design is redesign (Otto and Wood, 2001).