Practitioners of Design for Quality

Building in high quality continues to be the driving force of new product development activity in industry. Yet as we come to the end of the 1990s and look forward to the challenges in Design Research of the new millennium, Design for Quality does not appear to attract the attention or interest of many design researchers. Importantly, if research attention is not paid to Design for Quality, how can we expect to educate and train future design practitioners to master this critical dimension of product development? The purpose of this paper is to consider the current status of Design for Quality, explore the skills designers require to be effective practitioners of Design for Quality, and to identify some of the challenges the design research community needs to face.