Changing Product Development Culture

Challenge:

An Asian automotive OEM was Number 8 in sales worldwide. The CEO of the company announced it is targeting its position to become No. 5 worldwide. In order to accomplish this objective, the company’s executive VP of Engineering recognized a need to change its product development culture to produce higher quality and more reliable automobiles.

ASI Solution:

Tackling the challenge of changing the product development culture at the company, ASI Consulting Group conducted full 4-week project oriented Design for Six Sigma Black Belt training, with all sixty technical directors of the company. DFSS projects were carefully selected, and assigned to each of the Black Belt candidates.

Achieved Benefit:

We successfully implemented programs that began changing product development culture, but we also sustained the change with additional efforts. After the first wave of projects was completed, the average cost saving per project was approximated as $1.0 million. Besides substantial cost reductions, the company rapidly developed a DFSS culture within its engineering community.