Quality during Design

We’re at the concept phases of our product design, trying to get our heads around the high-level steps that our users are going to take to use our product. We have an idea that we’ll have many different user groups interacting with our product, but we’re not so clear about the big picture – who is doing what, when and who needs what afterwards. To put it all together, we can help ourselves with a...

There's a model that can help us visualize and consider the different barriers to harm: The Swiss Cheese Model of Accident Causation. Learn what makes up this model and how ideas are represented. There are also different ways that the model is being used today. How can we design for controls, policies, or actions that are part of the use of our product but outside of our control? We step thro...

There is a rather large family of test methods associated with Qualitative Accelerated Tests. They're also known as RETs (or Reliability Enhancement Tests).  Today, we’re focused on the models that are used to help us with the design. Awareness about these methods will help us with future test plans and project management. We talk about environmental stress testing and remind ourselves a litt...

We’re developing requirements for our product, including setting reliability requirements. Or we’re setting acceptance criteria for our test plans. What confidence levels do we choose? We don’t have to blindly set them - we can base it off the risks of failure, using our FMEA (failure mode effects analysis). FMEA is a great tool for us to refer to, to help us choose a relevant confidence level by...

We’re starting to populate an FMEA table with our team. We get it started, but then we get stuck in disagreements. Or we think we finish it and then we don’t know what to do with it. We can avoid these headaches with a little planning (or maybe a lot of planning - it depends on the project). We talk about risk management planning as it relates to FMEA. Visit the podcast blog for a transcript. Send...

It's almost a new calendar year! We look back at the most popular episodes, my favorite episodes, recommendations for conferences, and a look ahead at what 2022 will bring to Quality during Design. Subscribe for a weekly newsletter and to keep up to date with the new offerings in 2022. Let me know what you like by filling out this brief survey - it will help me to develop the type of content...

We talk about the 8D methodology, describe situations where we could benefit from it, list each of the 8 Disciplines, and compare it to PDSA and DMAIC. Check the podcast blog for the stopwatch graphic from Chris S.P. Visser, download a summary sheet, my book recommendation, and a link to 8D forms. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end...

How do we go about mistake-proofing our product design? There are steps we can take and a checklist we can use, based on a well-known manufacturing production method: poka-yoke. Download the guidelines and checklist , and then follow-along with the podcast. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late w...

We want to engage a reliability engineer in an analysis for our product design. They can help us produce some great information from which we can make decisions. You might be feeling uncomfortable about our team making a design decision based on those results. You don’t quite understand how the reliability engineer came up with the answer. You want to know where that information comes from so you...

There are many stories of design successes attributed to the right level of understanding of the customer. Product designers make decisions, daily, about how a product is going to look and perform. So, we need to really understand the customer. And, to really get the customer, engineers need to spend time with them.  Sometimes, the business doesn’t want us to interact with the customer or doesn’t...

Within our quality toolbox, there are a lot of graphical organizers. Some are better at fulfilling different goals than others. If we have a goal in mind, then we may choose a certain tool. However, we don’t want analysis paralysis about which tool is best to stop us from using any tool at all.  I share my 3 general guidelines about choosing a graphical quality tool, how to draw them, and when to...

Design for Excellence (DFX) is a concept that includes many initiatives, like design for usability, design for manufacturability and assembly, and design for environment and disassembly. It’s a focus on doing things right, exceeding customer expectations, optimizing what’s needed while minimizing costs, and continuous improvement.  Today we take a deep dive on one of those aspects: design for envi...

This episode talks about options for reliability life testing, specifically accelerated stress testing. We explore how accelerated stress testing is one subset of other reliability life testing, when it's a good idea, how we can approach doing it, and what we can do with the results. Visit the podcast blog for links and references. Related episodes:  Episode 6 “HALT! Watch out for that weakes...

What is design of experiments, or DOE? What do we use it for and what is it all about? We talk about when we might want to use it during the design cycle, and we do this without getting into all of the how-to and mathematical equations. Visit the podcast blog for a transcript. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap...

We’ve collected all sorts of preliminary information about our users that we’re using for a new product design. We may be faced with so much data we’re not sure where to turn first, or what design feature is a priority. There’s a simple, 2-way matrix we can use to help us sort it all out: an urgent/important matrix. We may have used it to prioritize tasks for ourselves or as a management strategy...

When we’re looking at results (like measures of a characteristic), we need to take care not to get too hung-up on what the statistics is trying to tell us. Yes, statistical tools are a good way for us to make decisions and the results can act as proof for us. But, there’s a practical, engineering side to results, too. We need to evaluate the statistical significance along with the practical signif...

In this episode we review sampling for design tests. We talk through a generic thought process for choosing a statistically relevant sample size and propose some basics that we can all learn about to better understand sampling. Our goal is for us to be able to better talk through a sampling scenario with our quality and reliability engineering friends, and to better prepare for the information tha...

It costs our customers to own our designed products. It costs them initially to purchase it, but it also costs them to use it, maintain it, repair it, and eventually dispose of it. And it costs our company in ways too, like processing, training requirements for customers, and warranty repair costs. Life cycle costing can help our team choose between design alternatives, like alternate design optio...

Good reliability requirements are going to drive our design decisions relating to the concept, the components, the materials, and other stuff. So, the moment to start defining reliability requirements is early in the design process. But, what makes a well-defined reliability requirement? There are five aspects it should cover: do you know what they are?  We'll describe what makes a good relia...

We have good requirements for the reliability of our design. We also have a preliminary design with ideas of how we're going to manufacture it. Is our design idea good enough? Are there things we should do to improve its performance and reliability? For a physical product, there are three general stages in its life cycle. In many cases the failure rates of physical products can be represented...

Flowcharting isn't just useful for manufacturing processes. We can use them in lots of ways to help us with design of products and to identify quality characteristics.  After all, products are used by people, and the way in which they use them is a process.  compare ideal vs. actual flowcharts  identify where there is disagreement about correct sequence or steps  identify common mistakes/prob...

Genichi Taguchi related his measure of quality (variation from the target spec) with economics, called the Taguchi Loss Function. It’s used to calculate the cost (in money) of a certain deviation from a target value. It assumes that the farther our quality characteristic is from our target value, the more costly it is to us. We talk about how we can use the Taguchi Loss Functions as a way for us t...

When we've identified a risk to our design or user process - and that risk can pose a potential harm - how many controls do we need to add? We discuss prevention vs. detection controls, ALARP, as low as possible, and some scenarios where we could (and maybe couldn't) justify a risk as acceptable without adding additional controls. Send us a message Work with Dianna I help product develop...

How we describe and approach the issues we need to solve can affect how we react to them.  We know we’re supposed to be solving for root causes. But are we, instead, really just addressing symptoms? Are we celebrating the quick fix and then moving on without addressing the root of our issue?   Recognize the common mishaps of us solving symptoms instead of really getting to the causes. And, clearly...

Objectives are goalposts of what it is we’re trying to accomplish. Though they’re only a part of planning a project, if we don’t have well-defined and clear objectives, it could lead to us not having the stellar project results we want. Our objective should be a SMART ACORN.  We review these two, complementing acronyms as ways to check that we're setting up our project for success.  Send us a...