Thermal design in the Design for Six Sigma — DIDOV framework

Fierce competition drives continuous improvement of products and product development processes in consumer electronics. The DIDOV (Define, Identify, Design, Optimize, and Verify) version of the Design for Six Sigma (Dfss) approach is widely recommended a means to improvement, especially in R&D environments. Due to the wide field of application, the Dfss-DIDOV method is formulated in very abstract terms, which makes it difficult to relate it to the engineering world. In this paper, the method is assessed in the context of the thermal design of electronics cooling in a consumer electronics product. The paper starts with a discussion of the DIDOV methodology and a comparison to thermal design flow. Next, the method is illustrated on a thermal design case.