Choosing Quality Tools (Mind Map vs. Flowchart vs. Spaghetti Diagram)

Within our quality toolbox, there are a lot of graphical organizers. Some are better at fulfilling different goals than others. If we have a goal in mind, then we may choose a certain tool. However, we don’t want analysis paralysis about which tool is best to stop us from using any tool at all.

I share my 3 general guidelines about choosing a graphical quality tool, how to draw them, and when to use them.

Plus, we talk about 3 tools in particular, prompted by a social media ask: mind map, process flowchart, and spaghetti diagram. We get into what they are, when we’re most likely to use them, and how they can be used for design.

[Read more…]

The DFE Part of DFX (Design For Environment and eXcellence)

Design for Excellence (DFX) is a concept that includes many initiatives, like design for usability, design for manufacturability and assembly, and design for environment and disassembly. It’s a focus on doing things right, exceeding customer expectations, optimizing what’s needed while minimizing costs, and continuous improvement.

Today we take a deep dive on one of those aspects: design for environment (DFE), including design for disassembly. What are reasons that a business would consider this important, and how does a design engineer fit in?

[Read more…]

Results-Driven Decisions, Faster: Accelerated Stress Testing as a Reliability Life Test

We want to ensure our designs perform reliably, as expected and intended. With today’s high-reliability products and quick release to market, we probably don’t have enough time to just test our parts at normal use rates. It would take too long, because our products ARE so reliable.  Or, we’ll miss our window of opportunity to get our product to market.

There are several ways to get reliability data to make design decisions. One of the ways is reliability life testing of our product.

This episode explores how accelerated stress testing is one subset of other reliability life testing methods, when it’s a good idea, how we can approach doing it, and what we can do with the results.

[Read more…]