Design Scorecards

For any solution, a performance expectation such as "reliability" would likely be tracked with a metric called "mean time between failures." This metric, in turn, is included in your Design Scorecards (Technique 39) for that solution. 

Performance expectations are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on which you ll focus your design and optimization efforts, and which you will track over time with your Design Scorecards (Technique 39) and/or Process Behavior Charts (Technique 52). 

For innovation, the key benefit of Design Scorecards is their ability to predict the final quality of a design and recognize gaps so it can be improved before it s implemented. Is there a risk that your design will go wrong How will you know if and when it does As well, you ll have to track your new innovation after it s implemented, making sure its performance record is visible to stakeholders so they can prevent malfunctions if possible, or at least react quickly to fix problems if they do occur. 

Design Scorecards have many uses, but primarily they identify which parameters or indicators contribute most to an optimized design. This helps your innovation team decide where to focus efforts early in the design cycle. 

You should be concerned with three Design Scorecard levels, as follows ... 

While the purpose of Design Scorecards is to prevent problems, defects, and errors through superior design, they also enable better problem detection after a new solution (design) is implemented. If you are in detect-and-fix mode, any number of process-optimization techniques may help, such as Process Behavior Charts (Technique 52), Cause Effect Matrix (Technique 54), Mistake Proofing (Technique 49), and Design of Experiments (Technique 50). 

You interpret the completed Design Scorecards after you implement your new solution and you have enough data for a specified period of time. As you interpret your scorecards, consider the following ... 

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