In part one of this two-part series, quality by design was discussed as a business problem involving successive gaps in new product introduction. A five-phase architecture was introduced. Part two looks at the last two elements of this architecture, customer-focused optimization and dominance over variability.

Customer-focused optimization

Quality by design starts and ends with the customer. Every new product introduction always has some amount of trade-off involved. If there are multiple customers, they may have conflicting needs. Even the same customer may have needs that compete with each other. Capacity and speed compete with cost of operation. Capacity can compete with speed. Flexibility and feature-rich offerings may have reduced ease of use, and so on.

Quality by design offers a range of tools and methods to make these trade-offs explicit and optimal for the customer. Some tools are highly mathematical, and others relate more to customer behavior. All focus on hitting the “sweet spot” that makes the right trade-offs from the customer view.

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