Author: Muhammad Ahmad

Internal failure costs are costs that are caused by products or services not conforming to requirements or customer/user needs and are found before delivery of products and services to external customers. They would have otherwise led to the customer not being satisfied. Deficiencies are caused both by errors in products and by inefficiencies in processes.…

Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a tool to determine the most cost‐effective option among different competing alternatives to manufacturing process, purchase, own, operate, maintain and, finally, dispose of an object or process, when each is equally appropriate to be implemented on technical grounds. For example, for a highway pavement, in addition to the initial…

The Toyota Way summarized the management principles of Toyota in a 4P model: Philosophy, Process, People, and Problem Solving (see Figure 8.21). The 4Ps form a pyramid, the foundation of which is a long‐term philosophy that focuses on adding value to customers and society. Building on that is Toyota’s investment in lean processes, which concentrates on shortening lead time by eliminating…

The design process that follows a spiral approach is preferable to the current “loops,” which represent feedback. That is, the client can infer that the design is progressing, but in order to incorporate various viewpoints, it is losing ground (and costing more money and time). Often, however, a synergetic and innovative design never goes backward.…

A cost–quality analysis is a way of studying the flowchart of a process to identify problems. The analysis helps a team look critically at individual steps of a process to find opportunities for improvement. Cost of quality means those costs incurred because of poor quality, costs that would not be incurred if things were done…

There are many parallels between the Six Sigma and lean philosophies. Both are focused on the process and process improvements. The techniques of each one complement the other and provide enhanced results. Comparing the Two Methodologies Six Sigma focuses on improving existing processes to give results that are essentially defect‐free. A CTQ characteristic or CTQ…

5S is a lean practice used to keep production workspace orderly and keep the workforce committed to maintaining order. Japanese terms English terms

Process sigma values provide a way of comparing performance of different processes, which can help you to prioritize the projects. The process sigma value represents the population of cases that meet the CTQs right first time. Sigma values are often expressed as defects per million opportunities, rather than per hundred or per thousand, to emphasize the…

Motorola Story The origin of Six Sigma is found at Motorola. In a study of the field life of a product, a Motorola engineer observed that products that were defect‐free at manufacturing rarely failed in early use by a customer. However, products which had failed during production and undergone rework were more susceptible to early…