A Design for Six Sigma: A Robust Tool in Systems Engineering Process

Abstract

While systems engineering has been widely applied to complex system development, some evidences are reported about major budget and schedule overruns in systems engineering applied. On the other hand, many organizations have been deploying Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to build Six Sigma momentums in the area of design and development for their products and processes. To explore the possibility of having a DFSS complement systems engineering process, this process reviews the systems engineering with their categories of effort and DFSS with its methodologies. A comparison of the systems engineering process and DFSS indicates that DFSS can be a complement to systems engineering for delivering higher quality products to customers faster at a lower cost. We suggest a simplified framework of systems engineering process, that is, PADOV which was derived from the generic systems engineering process which has been applied to the development of T-50 advanced supersonic trainer aircraft by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) with technical assistance of Lockheed Martin. We demonstrated that each phase of PADOV framework is comprehensively matched to the pertinent categories of systems engineering effort from various standards.