Applying QFD and Design For Six Sigma to the Design of the Suspension of a Formula SAE Race Car

The aim of this work is to describe the role of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in the Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) of the Università degli Studi di Firenze 2006 Formula SAE race car front suspension. Formula SAE (FSAE) is the world championship of the cars designed by engineering students. This is the greatest car competition in the world, because it is joined by more than 200 universities coming from everywhere, which compete with the vehicle they designed, built and tested during one year. The winning car is the one that has an innovative design, a low cost, a high reliability and the highest performance. Every team has to plan its activities taking in account the short period available to build and test the car, and the low budget. The Formula SAE Team will partecipate during 2006 at several SAE competitions, so it will be very important to “do things right at the first time”. During the critical review of the 2005 car has emerged that it’s necessary to improve suspension reliability, reduce Time to Market and costs. DFSS is the only design metodology that allows to resolve these criticities with the integration of several design tools, so it has been decided to use it for the first time to design a part of a Formula SAE car. In the first part of this work, QFD will be used to identify the suspension Functional Requirements (FRs) and Design Elements (DEs) which have to be improved. In the second part, the critical to quality DEs will be re-design in order to improve customers satisfaction, using the DFSS tools.