When we've identified a risk to our design or user process - and that risk can pose a potential harm - how many controls do we need to add?

We discuss prevention vs. detection controls, ALARP, as low as possible, and some scenarios where we could (and maybe couldn't) justify a risk as acceptable without adding additional controls.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

How we describe and approach the issues we need to solve can affect how we react to them.  We know we’re supposed to be solving for root causes. But are we, instead, really just addressing symptoms? Are we celebrating the quick fix and then moving on without addressing the root of our issue?  

Recognize the common mishaps of us solving symptoms instead of really getting to the causes. And, clearly describe our problem in two parts (statement and description of facts) to be confident that we’re moving toward solving the causes.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

Objectives are goalposts of what it is we’re trying to accomplish. Though they’re only a part of planning a project, if we don’t have well-defined and clear objectives, it could lead to us not having the stellar project results we want. Our objective should be a SMART ACORN.  We review these two, complementing acronyms as ways to check that we're setting up our project for success. 

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

Standards are everywhere, and lots of organizations are sourcing and creating them. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission held a workshop 2019 that recently made the news, again, in July 2021. It was called “Nixing the Fix: a Workshop on Repair Restrictions”. Here’s what it's about: manufacturers are not creating products with standard parts, or their design is created so its difficult for consumers to repair. 

Are standards part of the answer? How can we proactively use them them for design? Why should we?

See the transcript and a link to the FTC workshop at the podcast blog.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

Before we can link customer needs to design, production, and service of our products, we need to listen to and understand the voice of the customer.  We review 6 common VOC collection strategies, and talk about their pros and cons. We also discuss an affinity diagram process, which may help our team organize all of the data to get to customer needs.

Visit the podcast blog for a transcript and extra links and citations.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

We can look at test methods like a product in and of itself. Because tests also have requirements and need to produce usable results, we validate against those requirements. Validating our test method also ensures that they are precise and accurate.

We talk about things to consider when looking at product tests: tying test methods to the product's use environment, standards, and cumulative effects of testing.

See the podcast blog for some extra links and articles.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

Creating specs for suppliers and producers is generally at the forefront of our thoughts about the activity. But, it's also important to design for our QA friends, too, for inspection.

We talk about what acceptance sampling is all about. We also step through a thought process for identifying and creating design features for inspection using FMEA.

See the transcript at the podcast blog.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

When designs fail we can take on damaging mindsets while we're deciding our next steps, and this can lead us to bad decisions. We explore this and give some examples of pitfalls. We also talk about what to do within the design-realm to prepare for and combat those mindsets. Finally, I share my mantra when designing activities get tough with failures.  

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

In the quality world, kaizen is a tool for continuous improvement under the umbrella of a Lean philosophy. The quality-tool kaizen is just one layer of a larger, overarching idea that we benefit from small, incremental improvements made consistently.

Kaizen as a tool involves all employees of the company toward continuous improvement. The way kaizen events are done helps to promote the continuous improvement philosophy throughout the business through its effect on culture, time, proof, and teamwork. We talk more about how this all fits together in the podcast.

The podcast blog includes more information about books, articles, and links to videos and other websites.

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in. 

A Fishbone Diagram is named for its looks because it resembles the bones of a fish drawn on paper. Its less creative names are Cause-and-Effect Diagram and Ishikawa Diagram. It's popularly known to help with root cause analysis. But, we can also use it to help with goals and to evaluate a potential solution.

Why is it a Supertool? Just creating its headings helps us to better define our question. Writing it out as a graphical organizer helps organize jumbled thoughts. And, when paired with a 5W2H approach and the 5-whys, it can help us dig to the root causes.

Listen to hear more about Fishbones.
Visit the podcast blog for Fishbone Diagram examples, transcripts, and other links. 

Send us a message

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

Get the full framework.
→ Pierce the Design Fog 

ABOUT DIANNA
 Dianna Deeney is a product development process strategist with over 25 years of experience in regulated industries. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, where she helps product development teams make better decisions upstream — before costly design mistakes get built in.