BMGI India

Many organizations still treat quality as something to be checked and corrected near the end of the process. Defects are detected during inspection, testing, or after customer feedback. While this approach may control immediate risk, it quietly increases cost, delays delivery, and limits long-term performance.

Fixing quality late is expensive not because teams lack effort, but because the system is designed to react rather than prevent. This reactive model contrasts sharply with the Design for Six Sigma methodology, which focuses on building quality into design decisions from the beginning.

Why Quality Issues Escalate When Found Late

The later a defect is discovered, the more parts of the system it affects. A design issue found after production starts disrupts materials, schedules, inventory, and customer commitments. What could have been a small design adjustment becomes rework, scrap, expediting, and cross-functional coordination.

In established organizations, this typically appears as:

• Repeated rework cycles and engineering changes
• High inspection effort with limited reduction in defects
• Delivery delays caused by last-minute corrections
• Rising cost without a clear single cause

These outcomes signal design weaknesses that were never addressed early. This is precisely what DFSS for preventing defects at the design stage is intended to avoid.

Inspection Controls Symptoms, Not Causes

Inspection and testing identify defects only after value has already been added. The cost is absorbed regardless of whether the issue is corrected, reworked, or scrapped.

As products and processes grow more complex, inspection effort increases faster than quality improvement. More checks are added, but variation persists. Quality becomes a downstream activity rather than a design responsibility. This is why inspection-heavy systems struggle to achieve stability without addressing design risk.

How DFSS Changes the Point of Control

Design for Six Sigma shifts the point of control upstream. Instead of asking how to catch defects, it focuses on understanding requirements, functional relationships, and sources of variation before designs are finalized.

By applying robust product and process design using DFSS, organizations evaluate design alternatives based on risk and variability rather than relying on inspection to compensate later. Performance is validated through data, modeling, and predictive analysis before launch.

Key elements of this approach include:

• Defining critical quality requirements during design
• Assessing design sensitivity to variation
• Validating performance before production begins
• Designing processes capable of meeting requirements consistently

This approach supports reducing variation through Design for Six Sigma, which directly lowers downstream correction effort.

Cost Reduction Comes from Fewer Corrections, Not Faster Fixes

Many organizations invest in faster rework or stronger escalation mechanisms. DFSS reduces the need for correction altogether. When designs are stable, processes reach control faster and remain stable longer.

The results include:

• Lower rework and scrap
• Fewer late-stage engineering changes
• Shorter post-launch stabilization periods
• More predictable throughput and delivery

Many organizations invest in faster rework or stronger escalation mechanisms. DFSS reduces the need for correction altogether.

DFSS Supports Scalable and Reliable Growth

As organizations scale, late quality fixes create compounding risk. New products, variants, and capacity increases amplify unresolved design weaknesses.

DFSS enables organizations to reduce variation before scaling, align design decisions with execution, and improve yield and reliability without adding inspection layers. Quality becomes inherent to the system rather than dependent on controls.

The Real Shift

The real value of DFSS is not only better designs. It changes how organizations think about quality. Decisions are made earlier, when change is cheaper and easier. Problems are prevented rather than absorbed.

Fixing quality late will always cost more because it addresses consequences. Designing quality early changes the system so those consequences occur less often. That shift is what turns quality from a recurring cost into a sustained performance advantage.

Source: https://bmgindia.home.blog/2026/01/13/why-late-quality-fixes-cost-more-and-how-dfss-prevents-them/