Two long-time colleagues of Skip Creveling, and also consultants for PDSS, John King and Bill Jewett, have recently published a new book entitled Robustness Development and Reliability Growth: Value-Adding Strategies for New Products & Processes (Prentice Hall, ISBN: 978-0-13-222551-9).
A fresh look at product development with state-of-the-art methods and development process context is always a welcome event. Placing a strong, pro-active focus on robustness development and its key role in reliability growth is even more welcome as these two topics never seem to get the proper integration they so richly deserve. John & Bill have taken us all to a new level with their integrated insights and guidance on these essential topics for preventing problems during development processes. PDSS is proud to be associated with thought and practice leaders who tell it like it is when it comes to the hard but necessary work of doing things right.
Packed with detailed examples, diagrams and formulas that help integrate the tools and techniques of product development excellence, each of the books' 25 chapters concludes with a "Key Points" section and a list of discussion questions to help the reader think through and apply each technique to his or her own situation.
The book is organized into four sections.
1. Critical Drivers of Value, provides broad insights about development strategies and tactics.
2. Framework for Reliability Development, describes approaches for the development of robustness and the growth of reliability in the context of a product development process with well-functioning governance and decision processes.
3. Tools and Methods Supporting Reliability Development, describes selected methodologies with reasonable depth that may enable managers to institutionalize these practices.
4. Integration of Framework and Methods, is a discussion of the management of critical parameters and an example of development project that ties the strategies, decisions and methods together in a useful illustration.
The book contains practical subject matter for general managers, project leaders, product development engineers and scientists, reliability engineers and quality professionals. If you want reliability - this is the way to develop it!
John King has been training and consulting for PDSS since 2003. He is an expert in reliability and robust design and is the major contributor to the PDSS Inc. training materials in these areas. As a trainer, mentor and project consultant, John has helped clients worldwide improve both business processes and products. John has written and delivered Six Sigma training programs to clients followed by project mentoring to ensure a successful implementation of both DMAIC and Design for Six Sigma (DfSS) projects.
John has made contributions as an Engineer, Program Manager and Laboratory Head in a long career in product development and commercialization. At Westinghouse, as a product development engineer, he designed rotating machinery for the Steam Turbine Division. His first Management assignment was as a Chief Engineer at a Westinghouse division that designed power plant fans. At Xerox he was a Development Manager on a new product program, and at Kodak he was responsible for a variety of new product programs including medical imaging and office products. His responsibilities have ranged from upstream R&D projects through commercialization leading to product launch.
At Heidelberg Digital, John was Reliability Manager for all products. John's experience included analysis and experimentation leading to product improvements as well as service cost reductions for the business. At Heidelberg, John's focus included technical and business issues ranging from reliability analysis and growth to recommendations on pricing of service.
Bill Jewett is a consultant to all levels of management and their multifunctional teams, specializing in lean product development. He possesses a broad range of process knowledge, including advanced product planning and technology development and their related good practices. He has expertise in adapting process guidelines to a variety of program characteristics, complexities and technical disciplines.
Bill has had a long and distinguished career at Eastman Kodak/Heidelberg Digital in a variety of positions and areas. These include his most recent position, which he held for almost 15 years, as Steward of Product Commercialization Process. As Steward, he was responsible for guiding program managers and their multifunctional teams in adapting and implementing the processes for the development of new products and technologies. In this role, he conducted benchmark studies of other companies' processes and practices, reengineered the "fuzzy front end" of the process to integrate advanced product planning and technology development, and clarified the acceptance criteria for program-level decisions and risk assessments for product development gate reviews. Bill excels at adapting generic product commercialization processes into discipline-specific guidelines, such as in software development and materials development.
More information, sample content and online purchases are at
InformIT's website. The book is available in hardcover and Adobe e-book format. The site offers free shipping and substantial discounts off the list price. Online content is also available via
Safari Online's Rough Cuts.
