This book integrates key tools and processes into a comprehensive program for developing more robust and reliable technology-based products. Drawing on their extensive product development experience, the authors present a complete process for ensuring product performance throughout the entire lifecycle, from understanding customers’ needs through manufacturing and post-launch support.
The authors begin by presenting broad insights and high-level strategies for improving product quality. Next, they demonstrate how to implement robustness and reliability strategies that complement existing governance and decision processes. A section on tools and methods shows how to institutionalize best practices and apply them consistently. Finally, they tie strategies, decisions, and methods together through a case study project.
Product developers will learn how to
- Understand critical drivers of value in technology products, including reliability and durability
- Implement a process model and roadmap for improving reliability and robustness
- Increase robustness early in development, leading to shorter cycle times in later phases
- Improve the stability of production performance under stress conditions
- Assess both organizational and process capabilities for delivering robust and reliable products
- Understand and manage customer-driven requirements
- Use tools including descriptive and inferential statistics and DOE-based empirical models
Managers will understand expectations for
- Design concepts supported by rigorous analyses of alternatives
- Products and processes delivering higher value to customers
- Products with higher reliability and longer useful lives
- Product processes with lower costs and higher capabilities
- Development projects having shorter, more predictable cycle times
Readers are introduced to many thought leaders whose writings can be sources of further learning. This book is a valuable resource for anyone responsible for delivering reliable, profitable technology products, including general managers, program managers, engineers, scientists, and reliability and quality professionals.
Table of Contents:
Preface xxi
Acknowledgments xxix
About the Authors xxxi
Section I: Critical Drivers of Value
Chapter 1: Time, Money, and Risks 3
Quality, Costs, and Schedules 4
Management of Process Improvements 7
Soft Causes of Poor Reliability and Durability 12
Key Points 20
Discussion Questions 20
Chapter 2: Reliability, Durability, and Robustness 21
Reliability as an Element of Value to Customers 22
Essential Elements of Reliability 23
The Taxonomy of a Failure 26
Reliability Metrics 29
The Anatomy of Quality Loss 33
The Reduction of Performance Variations 39
Key Points 44
Discussion Questions 44
Chapter 3: Strategies for Reliability Development 45
Are Better Strategies Important? 45
Strategies for Ongoing Processes 48
Strategies Specific to Product Development 51
Capabilities of the Organization 57
Key Points 63
Discussion Questions 63
Section II: Framework for Reliability Development
Chapter 4: A Process Model for Product Development 67
What Is a Product Development Process? 67
Integration of Key Development Principles 71
A Process Model for Product Development 76
Advanced Product-Planning Process 77
Technology Development Process 79
Product Development Process 81
Older versus Better Methods 98
Key Points 100
Discussion Questions 100
Chapter 5: Road Map for Reliability Development 103
Build a Compelling Case for Your Reliability Project 103
Linking Activities to the Product Development Phases 104
Key Initiatives of a Reliability Development Project 104
The Role of Testing 116
Key Points 119
Discussion Questions 119
Chapter 6: Effective Decisions 121
Qualities of a Good Decision-Making Process 122
Types of Project Reviews 132
Key Points 144
Discussion Questions 145
Chapter 7: Robustness Development for Product Designs 147
Technology and Product Development 147
Functional Diagram 150
Stressful Conditions 151
Parallel Development of Products and Processes 155
Robustness Development 158
Examples of Robustness Development 162
Robust Design 165
Robustness Development Fixtures 167
Key Points 168
Discussion Questions 169
Chapter 8: Reliability Growth and Testing 171
Product Testing 172
Reliability Growth Testing 174
Drivers of Reliability Growth Rate 181
Accelerated Tests 183
Understanding Stress versus Strength 185
Tools and Systems That Support Testing 190
Overview of Various Types of Tests 196
Key Points 197
Discussion Questions 197
Section III: Tools and Methods Supporting Reliability Development
Chapter 9: Understanding and Managing Customer-Driven Requirements 201
Objectives for Product Development 202
Types of Requirements 203
How Requirements Affect Project Success 206
How Requirements Flow Down 213
VOC Activities Vary Throughout the Development Process 214
The Major Steps in Requirements Gathering 215
Processing and Analyzing Interview Data 221
Key Elements of Requirements Management 227
How Can Your Requirements Efforts Fail? 228
Key Points 229
Discussion Questions 230
Additional Reading 230
Additional Authors Worth Following 230
Chapter 10: Quality Function Deployment 231
What Is Quality Function Deployment? 231
Expected Benefits of QFD 233
The Structure of QFD 234
Sequence of Matrices 244
The QFD Team 245
Suggestions to Improve the Facilitation of QFD 246
Key Points 247
Discussion Questions 248
Further Reading 248
Chapter 11: Concept Generation and Selection 249
Decisions in Product Development 249
Concept Generation and Selection 250
Process Guidance 256
Teamwork 259
Key Points 260
Discussion Questions 260
Chapter 12: Axiomatic Design 261
Axiomatic Design 262
Improvement of Design Concepts 272
System Decomposition 274
A Familiar Example 279
Key Points 282
Discussion Questions 282
Chapter 13: Tools to Reduce Risks 285
Project Team Meetings for Risk Reduction 285
Useful Tools Provide Valuable Benefits 286
Risk Analyses 289
Matrix Analyses 294
Flowcharts 296
Tree Analyses 301
Key Points 307
Discussion Questions 307
Further Reading 307
Chapter 14: Descriptive Statistics 309
Why Do You Need Statistics? 309
Graph the Data First 310
Descriptive Statistics 322
The Normal Distribution 325
Key Points 329
Discussion Questions 329
Chapter 15: Inferential Statistics 331
Questions You Need Statistics to Help Answer 331
Population versus Samples 332
The Power of Averaging 333
Making Comparisons and Assessing Progress 335
Hypothesis Testing, Confidence Intervals, and p-Values 339
Equivalence Testing 364
Some Concerns with Significance Tests 368
Key Points 369
Discussion Questions 370
Chapter 16: Building Models Using ANOVA and Regression 371
Uncovering Relationships and Proving Cause and Effect 371
Empirical Models 375
ANOVA 376
Model Building Using Regression 380
Summary 391
Key Points 392
Discussion Questions 393
Chapter 17: Building Empirical Models Using DOE 395
Overview of DOE 395
Important Questions to Answer before an Experiment 400
Important Questions to Answer after Running the Experiment 404
Some Important Considerations 406
Types of Experiments 409
Sequential Approach to Experimentation 412
A Simple Example 412
Key Points 414
Discussion Questions 415
Chapter 18: Developing System Robustness Using DOE 417
Using System Models and Noise to Improve Robustness 417
Robustness Optimization of the Machining Process 421
Additional Options for Optimization 426
Key Points 429
Discussion Questions 429
Chapter 19: Robustness Optimization Using Taguchi’s Methods 431
Taguchi’s Contributions to Robust Design 431
Building a Detailed Model versus Improving System Robustness 433
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (S/N) 437
Example Problem 440
Key Points 452
Discussion Questions 454
Chapter 20: Tolerance Optimization 455
The Tolerance Design Problem 455
Controlling Variability 458
How Do Tolerances Affect Product Performance? 459
Steps for Tolerance Design 462
Tolerances and the Cost of Quality 464
Analysis of Tolerance Stacks 466
Optimization of Functional Responses 474
Key Points 477
Discussion Questions 477
Chapter 21: Reliability Functions and Life Distributions 479
Fundamental Reliability Functions 479
Useful Life Distributions 483
Key Points 493
Discussion Questions 494
Chapter 22: Life Data and Their Implications 495
Sources of Life Data 495
Competing Failure Modes, Mixtures of Life Distributions, and the Importance of Failure Analysis 496
Preventive Maintenance of Repairable Systems 499
Fitting a Life Distribution to a Data Set 501
Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) 506
Mixed Failures from Time and Actuations 510
Key Points 512
Discussion Questions 512
Section IV: Integration of Framework and Methods
Chapter 23: Critical Parameter Management 515
CPM and the Domains of Product Development 515
Linking Customer Satisfaction and Critical Parameters 519
Assessing Difficulty 522
Assessing Importance 525
Critical Parameters and Risk 528
Critical Parameter Measurement 531
CPM: A Process for Creating, Using, and Maintaining Information 532
Key Points 532
Discussion Questions 533
Chapter 24: An Illustration of Process Methods and Tools 535
Advanced Product Planning 536
Product Development 538
Epilogue 559
Chapter 25: Balancing Schedules, Budgets, and Business Risks 561
Ongoing Attention to Product Development Capabilities 563
Be a Student of the Process 572
Glossary 573
Bibliography 585
Index 593
About the Author :
John P. King has made contributions as an engineer, program manager, and laboratory head during a long career in product development and commercialization. His responsibilities have ranged from upstream R&D projects through commercialization and product launch. At Westinghouse, Xerox, Kodak, and Heidelberg Druckmaschinen, John worked as an engineer and manager in developing a wide range of products, including turbo machinery, office products, and medical imaging systems.
As a consultant, mentor, and trainer, John has helped clients worldwide improve both business processes and products. He has worked with project teams for both large and small companies and has written and delivered training programs to clients, followed by project mentoring to ensure the successful completion of their objectives.
John is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society for Quality, the American Statistical Association, and the Society of Reliability Engineers. He holds a BME from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Northeastern University.
Bill S. Jewett is a consultant to businesses engaged in the development of new technologies and multidisciplined products. With insights into important paradigms and advancements in practices, he assists improvement teams in upgrading their engineering and management processes, project management strategies, cross-functional teamwork, and governance of their development projects.
For many years Bill worked for Eastman Kodak Company and Heidelberg Druckmaschinen with much of his focus on the development of high-volume electrophotographic copiers and printers. Among his division-level responsibilities were the management of product development projects and of competency centers for mechanical and systems engineering. At the corporate level he was one of the authors of the processes for advanced product planning, technology development, product commercialization, and their related governance. For over a decade he taught the processes and coached teams in their adaptation and implementation. As the process steward, he evolved the process models to incorporate lessons learned from internal practice and external benchmarking.
Bill participates frequently in the conferences of PDMA, Management Roundtable, and INCOSE. He holds a BSME from Swarthmore College and an MBA from the University of Rochester.
The home page for Mr. Jewett and Mr. King is www.jewettking.com.
