Defects
Reducing the number of defects discovered by quality control.Improve manufacturing processes to reduce defects to 0.2% of units tested.
Quality Control
Improving the quality control process itself.Expand quality control to test 20% of units in a batch from the current sampling of 5%.
Measurement
Measuring new quality metrics.Capture a reason code for quality control failures to feed into root cause analysis and continuous improvement. Target: reason code captured for 100% of defects.
Benchmarking
Comparing your product or service quality to your competitors and industry.Develop a benchmark for order turnaround time. Target: obtain accurate turnaround time estimates for top 4 competitors.
Reporting
Capturing valuable measurements and communicating them.Report defects related to supply issues to the procurement manager on a weekly basis to feed into supplier scorecards. Target: capture and report of 100% of supply related defects by Q2.
Durability
Increasing the durability of products with new designs, materials and methods.Increase the durability of our premium rechargeable batteries to 2000 charges by implementing a redesign that will replace the cardboard outer casing of the product with a durable and odorless plastic.
Service Quality
The quality of services is typically measured with intangible elements such as wait time.Reduce average wait time for check-in to less than 90 seconds by implementing a system that forecasts customer volumes to increase staffing during peak demand.
Customer Ratings
Improving ratings on external sites such as a hotel that is concerned with improving review scores on a popular travel site.Eliminate unpopular resort charges to improve average ratings on the top four travel sites to 3.8 from the current average rating of 2.8.
Customer Experience
Internal measures of the customer experience such as turnaround time for requests.Reduce the turnaround time for order cancellations to 8 minutes by automatically approving any cancellation requested by the customer within 20 minutes of order submittal.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a common way to measure quality for both products and services.Increase customer satisfaction to 73% by rolling out improved packaging to all regions.
Availability
The availability of services, particular digital services.Improve availability of the customer banking app to 99.95% in Q1 by addressing architectural problems with the service.
Data Quality
Addressing data quality issues such as the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of data.Sponsor a data cleansing project to improve the quality of customer data. Target: 100% accuracy for customer name and current contact data.
Process Quality
The quality of process outputs such as a billing process that produces monthly customer invoices.Reduce billing errors to less than 0.3% of invoices with a quality control process for bills.
Supply
The quality of supplied components, parts and materials.Improve receiving inspection procedures to detect 99.9% of quality defects for parts before they reach the production line.
Traceability
Improving the tracking of things so that quality problems can be investigated, isolated and managed.Develop a tracking system for parts so that each product can be mapped back to suppliers, shipments and part serial numbers.
Consistency
Making products and services predictable, stable and consistent.Implement new kitchen procedures to improve the consistency of key menu items such as our classic hamburger. Such procedures will ensure menu items look like photos in the menu and taste the same every time. Measured with a customer survey that asks "Was your meal as expected?"
Standards
The implementation of external or internal quality standards.Develop and implement a standard for the accelerated life testing of air conditioning units. Target: a one month process that accurately maps to the 5 and 10 year durability and resilience of products.
Human Error
Reducing human error with improved policy, procedure, processes, systems and training.Require that both pilots and the responsible flight operations manager sign off on the maintenance record for an aircraft before takeoff so that the pilot is aware of any recent maintenance issues with the aircraft. Target: 100% compliance to this policy for all flights.
Information Security
In many cases, a quality assurance team acts as oversight for information security issues, particularly security issues related to compliance.Reduce the number of corporate laptops that are lost or stolen to less than 5 a year by providing secure storage at office sites and encouraging their use, particularly if an employee plans to directly go out after work.
Safety
Reducing health and safety risks.Introduce power sprayer equipment for the night time clean up process so that cleaning staff can clean equipment without touching it. Target: zero safety incidents related to the night time clean up shift.
Compliance
Compliance to laws, regulations, standards and internal policies such as best practices.Achieve and sustain organic certification for all food products with a full audit trail for the sources of ingredients. Target: maintenance of certification with zero violations of applicable regulations and standards.
Monitoring
Implementing controls to monitor processes, procedures and other elements that impact quality.Institute a review process for pilot preflight checklists to detect pilots who appear to have skipped steps or faked data. Target: review a sample of 7% of checklists by Q3.
Logistics
Improving inbound and outbound logistics where this impacts quality. For example, an ecommerce firm that views late deliveries as damaging to the customer experience.Monitor and report late shipments by delivery partner and escalate poor performance. Target: reduce late deliveries to 3% or less.
Training
Training designed to reduce incidents or improve service or product quality.Conduct customer service training for all customer service staff that is focused on dealing with difficult service scenarios. Target: reduce instances of customer service failures to less than 10 per month.
Incident Management
The process of responding to customer impacting issues.Reduce mean-time-to-repair to 13 minutes by developing troubleshooting manuals for major systems.
Problem Management
The process of investigating and fixing the root cause of incidents.Conduct a root cause analysis for 100% of severity 1 & 2 incidents and resolve root causes.
| Overview: Quality Goals | ||
Type | ||
Definition | Targets for the improvement of quality. | |
Related Concepts | ||
