ACHIEVING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION THROUGH ROBUST DESIGN

A winning product has to consistently outperform its rivals by providi ng value in today's highly competitive markets. At the heart of consis tent value is robust design - the process of ensuring that a product w ill perform well despite variations in raw materials, components, manu facturing, and operating conditions. It consists of steps for identify ing key parameters that affect the customer, analyzing to predict and improve robustness, and measuring to confirm performance. As it exists in AT&T's Transmission Systems Business Unit (TSBU) for hardware deve lopment, robust design is a real, effective process. It should be used to ensure design robustness for all designs, especially those intende d for multi-use platforms.