Explain when a design-for-quality approach and DMADV are more appropriate than DMAIC for a project.
Quality & Productivity
Design for Quality and the DMADV Methodology for New Product Launches
A design-for-quality course that walks product and process teams through the DMADV methodology, from capturing customer requirements to verifying a design before launch.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Traditional process improvement work improves an existing process, but a genuinely new product or service has no baseline to improve and no history of defects to analyse yet. A design-for-quality approach built on the DMADV methodology exists for exactly this situation, guiding a team from customer requirements to a verified design before the first full production run. This course follows the five DMADV phases in sequence: defining the project and its link to business strategy, measuring customer needs through voice of customer work and translating them into critical to quality characteristics, analysing concepts against those characteristics with tools such as the Pugh matrix, designing the detailed solution with quality function deployment and design failure mode and effects analysis, and verifying the result through prototype testing and a formal design verification plan. Participants build a critical to quality tree and a house of quality for a realistic new product scenario, practise concept selection under genuine trade-offs, and learn how tolerance design and robust design thinking prevent problems that would otherwise surface only after launch. The course closes by connecting DMADV back to the stage-gate process a launch team already follows, so design for quality becomes a discipline layered onto existing work rather than a separate bureaucracy.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Translate voice of customer input into a structured critical to quality tree.
Build a house of quality to link customer requirements to measurable design characteristics.
Select between competing design concepts using a Pugh matrix or similar weighted comparison.
Apply design failure mode and effects analysis to identify and mitigate risks before launch.
Set tolerances and apply robust design thinking to reduce sensitivity to manufacturing variation.
Plan and interpret a design verification plan that confirms readiness for full launch.
Who Should Attend
Product development engineers launching a new product with no existing process baseline.
Expert improvement practitioners extending their toolkit beyond DMAIC.
New product introduction and programme managers coordinating cross-functional launch teams.
Quality engineers embedded in design teams responsible for design verification and validation.
R&D leaders wanting a structured alternative to informal concept development.
Process design engineers building a new manufacturing line alongside a new product.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Define and Measure: Framing the Project and Requirements
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Defining a Design-for-Quality Project
- Write a project charter that links a new product or service launch to a specific business goal.
- Distinguish a DMADV project from a DMAIC project based on whether a baseline process already exists.
- Identify project stakeholders and sponsors whose approval gates the move between DMADV phases.
- Set scope boundaries early to prevent a design project from expanding beyond its original charter.
Session 2Measuring the Voice of the Customer
- Collect voice of customer data through interviews, surveys and direct observation of product use.
- Sort customer statements into needs categories using an affinity diagram or similar clustering method.
- Translate customer needs into critical to quality characteristics that can be measured objectively.
- Build a critical to quality tree that traces each measurable characteristic back to a customer need.
02Analyse: Turning Requirements Into Design Concepts
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Quality Function Deployment and the House of Quality
- Construct a house of quality that maps customer requirements against engineering characteristics.
- Use competitive benchmarking rows within the house of quality to compare against alternative solutions.
- Identify the technical characteristics with the strongest relationship to unmet customer requirements.
- Cascade priorities from the house of quality into targets for parts, processes and production.
Session 2Generating and Selecting Design Concepts
- Generate multiple candidate design concepts before evaluating any single option in depth.
- Score competing concepts against critical to quality characteristics using a Pugh matrix.
- Apply structured creativity techniques to resolve a conflicting design requirement without a forced compromise.
- Select a preferred concept and document the reasoning so it survives later design reviews.
03Design: Detailing and De-Risking the Solution
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Detailed Design and Design Failure Mode Analysis
- Develop the selected concept into a detailed design with defined parameters and tolerances.
- Run a design failure mode and effects analysis to identify potential failure modes before they occur.
- Prioritise design risks using severity, occurrence and detection ratings from the failure mode analysis.
- Assign and track design changes that close out high-priority risks identified during the analysis.
Session 2Tolerance Design and Robust Design Thinking
- Set tolerances that balance manufacturing cost against the functional requirements of the design.
- Apply robust design principles to reduce a design's sensitivity to manufacturing and usage variation.
- Use a simple tolerance stack-up check to confirm that assembled tolerances still meet the requirement.
- Identify noise factors in the use environment that the design must tolerate without failure.
04Verify: Confirming Readiness for Launch
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Prototype Testing and Design Verification
- Plan a design verification plan that maps each requirement to a test method and acceptance criterion.
- Build and test prototypes under conditions that represent realistic customer use, not just laboratory ideals.
- Interpret verification test results to confirm the design meets its critical to quality targets.
- Decide when a failed verification test requires a design change rather than a test method change.
Session 2Transitioning From Verification to Full Launch
- Confirm process capability for key characteristics before committing to full-volume production.
- Link DMADV exit criteria to the stage gates of the organisation's existing product development process.
- Capture lessons learned from the DMADV project for use in the next new product introduction.
- Hand over a verified design package to operations with the documentation needed to sustain it.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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