Product Design:Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business to its customers.

It is the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products. In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible products. The product designer's role is to combine art, science, and technology to create new products that other people can use. Their evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that now allow designers to communicate, visualize, and analyze ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past. There are various product design processes and they are all focused on different aspects. This process is usually completed by a group of people, designers or field experts in the product they are creating, or specialists for a specific component of the product, such as engineers. Design expression comes from the combined effect of all elements in a product. Colour tone, shape, and [6] size should direct a person's thoughts towards buying the product . Therefore it is in the product designer's best interest to consider the audiences who are most likely to be the product's end consumers. Keeping in mind how consumers will perceive the product during the design process, will direct you [7] towards your products success in the market . However, even within a specific audience, it is challenging to cater to each possible personality within that group. The solution to that is to create a [6] product that, in its designed appearance and function, expresses a personality or tells a story . Products that carry such attributes are more likely to give off a stronger expression that will attract more consumers. Product design is not an easy task. The manufacturer is concerned with production cost. At the end of the [9] day, the manufacturer wants an economically produced product. The purchaser looks at price, [9] appearance, and prestige value. The end user is concerned with usability and functionality of the final product.
[1]

Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola in 1986.[1][2] Six Sigma became well known after Jack Welch made it a central focus of his business strategy at General Electric in 1995[3], and today it is widely used in many sectors of industry. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.[4] It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods.[4] Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction and/or profit increase).[4] The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with manufacturing, specifically terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield, or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.

DMAIC
The DMAIC project methodology has five phases:

Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically. Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data. Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation. Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques such as design of experiments, poka yoke or mistake proofing, and standard work to create a new, future state process. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability. Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Implement control systems such as statistical process control, production boards, visual workplaces, and continuously monitor the process.

Total Quality Management Total quality management or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes.[1] TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Considering the practices of TQM as discussed in six empirical studies, Cua, McKone, and Schroeder (2001) identified the nine common TQM practices as cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement.

Basic Principles of Total Quality Management (TQM)

The basic principles for the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy of doing business are to satisfy the customer, satisfy the supplier, and continuously improve the business processes. Questions you may have include: How do you satisfy the customer? Why should you satisfy the supplier? What is continuous improvement?

Satisfy the customer

The first and major TQM principle is to satisfy the customer--the person who pays for the product or service. Customers want to get their money's worth from a product or service they purchase.

Users
If the user of the product is different than the purchaser, then both the user and customer must be satisfied, although the person who pays gets priority.

Company philosophy
A company that seeks to satisfy the customer by providing them value for what they buy and the quality they expect will get more repeat business, referral business, and reduced complaints and service expenses.

Some top companies not only provide quality products, but they also give extra service to make their customers feel important and valued.

Internal customers
Within a company, a worker provides a product or service to his or her supervisors. If the person has any influence on the wages the worker receives, that person can be thought of as an internal customer. A worker should have the mind-set of satisfying internal customers in order to keep his or her job and to get a raise or promotion.

Chain of customers
Often in a company, there is a chain of customers, -each improving a product and passing it along until it is finally sold to the external customer. Each worker must not only seek to satisfy the immediate internal customer, but he or she must look up the chain to try to satisfy the ultimate customer.

Satisfy the supplier

A second TQM principle is to satisfy the supplier, which is the person or organization from whom you are purchasing goods or services.

External suppliers
A company must look to satisfy their external suppliers by providing them with clear instructions and requirements and then paying them fairly and on time. It is only in the company's best interest that its suppliers provide it with quality goods or services, if the company hopes to provide quality goods or services to its external customers.

Internal suppliers
A supervisor must try to keep his or her workers happy and productive by providing good task instructions, the tools they need to do their job and good working conditions. The supervisor must also reward the workers with praise and good pay.

Get better work

The reason to do this is to get more productivity out of the workers, as well as to keep the good workers. An effective supervisor with a good team of workers will certainly satisfy his or her internal customers. Empower workers One area of satisfying the internal suppler is by empowering the workers. This means to allow them to make decisions on things that they can control. This not only takes the burden off the supervisor, but it also motivates these internal suppliers to do better work.

Continuous improvement
The third principle of TQM is continuous improvement. You can never be satisfied with the method used, because there always can be improvements. Certainly, the competition is improving, so it is very necessary to strive to keep ahead of the game.

Working smarter, not harder

Some companies have tried to improve by making employees work harder. This may be counter-productive, especially if the process itself is flawed. For example, trying to increase worker output on a defective machine may result in more defective parts. Examining the source of problems and delays and then improving them is what is needed. Often the process has bottlenecks that are the real cause of the problem. These must be removed.

Worker suggestions
Workers are often a source of continuous improvements. They can provide suggestions on how to improve a process and eliminate waste or unnecessary work.

Quality methods
There are also many quality methods, such as just-in-time production, variability reduction, and poka-yoke that can improve processes and reduce waste.

Summary
The principles of Total Quality Management are to seek to satisfy the external customer with quality goods and services, as well as your company internal customers; to satisfy your external and internal suppliers; and to continuously improve processes by working smarter and using special quality methods.

ISO 9000
The ISO 9000 family of standards are related to quality management systems and designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders.[1] The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, and available through National standards bodies while meeting statutory and regulatory requirements. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems,[2] including the eight management principles[3][2] on which the family of standards is based. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard have to fulfill.[4] Third party certification bodies provide independent confirmation that organizations meet the requirements of ISO 9001. Over a million organizations worldwide[5] are independently certified, making ISO 9001 one of the most widely used management tools in the world today. Despite widespread use, however, the ISO certification process has been criticized[6][7] as being wasteful and not being useful for all organizations.[ The growth in ISO 9001 certification is shown in the table below. The worldwide total of ISO 9001 certificates can be found in the ISO Survey of 9001 in 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Worldwide total of ISO 9001:2000/2008 certificates Dec 2000 Dec 2001 Dec 2002 Dec 2003 Dec 2004 Dec 2005 Dec 2006 Dec 2007 Dec 2008 Dec 2009 457,834 510,349 561,767 497,919 660,132 773,867 896,929 951,486 982,832 1,064,785

Source: ISO Survey 2009 In recent years there has been a rapid growth in China, which now accounts for approximately a quarter of the global certifications.
Top 10 countries for ISO 9001 certificates - 2009 Rank 1 2 3 4 5 Country China Italy Japan Spain Russian Federation No. of certificates 257,076 130,066 68,484 59,576 53,152

6 7 8 9 10

Germany United Kingdom India USA Korea, Republic of

47,156 41,193 37,493 28,935 23,400

Bath tub Curve

The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering. It describes a particular form of the hazard function which comprises three parts:

The first part is a decreasing failure rate, known as early failures. The second part is a constant failure rate, known as random failures. The third part is an increasing failure rate, known as wear-out failures.

The name is derived from the cross-sectional shape of a bathtub. The bathtub curve is generated by mapping the rate of early "infant mortality" failures when first introduced, the rate of random failures with constant failure rate during its "useful life", and finally the rate of "wear out" failures as the product exceeds its design lifetime. In less technical terms, in the early life of a product adhering to the bathtub curve, the failure rate is high but rapidly decreasing as defective products are identified and discarded, and early sources of potential failure such as handling and installation error are surmounted. In the mid-life of a productgenerally, once it reaches consumersthe failure rate is low and constant. In the late life of the product, the failure rate increases, as age and wear take their toll on the product. Many consumer products strongly reflect the bathtub curve, such as computer processors.

Relation b/w production and productivity

Production refers to the physical output in the production process. For example, 10 cars...but it does not say the 10 cars are made by 10 workers or 100 workers. Productivity is production with respect to another factor such as time, people, money, etc. For example, 10 cars/day or 10 cars/100workers or 10 cars/$10,000 labor cost, etc. Production and productivity may not be linear in relationship. If 1,000,000 cars are made daily...that may be high production but if 5 millions workers are needed to achieve this result, than it may be low productivity. Both production and productivity is a physical mean to compare how good or how bad the production process is. However, the number usually can only give you some indication of the health state of the production process but not the whole picture. For example, we would think that bigger the number for production or productivity is a good thing but that may not be so. Let's say, US has high productivity in car manufacturing...100 cars/day/100 workers. This may be better than 2 cars/day/100 workers because the workers are more hardworking and more productive. However, they may have to work very fast and put in very long hours, so in the long run, the workers may be stressed out and leave or they die at work. So we see that there is indeed an optimal range for production and productivity. Another example, if making a certain chemical is very dangerous to the workers, and it pollutes the environment, then we want to shoot for zero production or productivity.