5 Performance Measures
5 Performance Measures
5 Performance Measures
Introduction
The sixth and final concept of Total Quality Measurement (TQM) is performance measures. One
of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award core values is managing by fact rather than by
gut feeling. Managing an organization without performance measures is like a captain of a ship
The ship would most likely end up traveling in circles, as would an organization. Measures play
Typical Measurements
What should be measured is frequently asked by managers and teams. The information below
Human Resources:
Lost time due to accidents, absenteeism, turnover, employee satisfaction index, number of
suggestions for improvement, number of suggestions implemented, number of training hours per
employee, training cost per employee, number of active teams, number of grievances.
Customers:
Number of complaints, number of on-time deliveries, warranty data such as parts replacement,
customer satisfaction index, time to resolve complaints, telephone data such as response time,
Inventory turns, SPC charts, Cp /Cpk, amount of scrap/rework, nonconformities per million
units, software errors per 1000 lines of code, percent of flights that arrive on time, process yield,
machine downtime, actual performance to goal, number of products returned, cost per unit.
New product time to market, design change orders, R & D spending to sales, average time to
Suppliers:
SPC charts, Cp /Cpk, on-time delivery, service rating, quality performance, billing accuracy,
average lead time, percent of suppliers that are error free, just-in-time delivery target.
Marketing/Sales:
Sales expense to revenue, order accuracy, introduction cost to development cost, new product
sales to total sales, new customers, gained or lost accounts, sales income to number of
Administration:
Revenue per employee, expense to revenue, cost of poor quality, percent of payroll distributed
on time, number of days accounts receivable past due, number of accounts payable past due,
office equipment up-time, purchase order errors, vehicle fleet data, order entry/billing accuracy.
A good metric compares the measurement of interest to the total possible outcomes, such as
Criteria
All organizations have some measurements in place that can be adapted for TQM. However,
some measurements may need to be added. In order to evaluate the existing measures or add new
2. Few in number: The important measures must be distinguished from the unimportant ones so
that users can concentrate on just a few. Two or three measures should be sufficient for any work
group, with the number increasing for departments, functional areas, plants, and corporations.
Quality councils may wish to use composite measures such as a customer satisfaction index. It is
composed of several weighted metrics such as on-time delivery, cost, product or service quality,
and complaints.
3. Developed by users: In order to ensure ownership of the measures, they must be developed by
the user. Measures dictated by a higher authority will usually not receive support from
downstream units. However, in some cases, measures are mandated by the customer.
customers. Control over important changes should be vested in the people who are held
responsible for the performance measure. They also decide what measures to use and set target
goals.
5. Improvement: Although correcting nonconformances and making current decisions are
important, the focus should be on improvement, prevention, and strategic long-term planning and
goal setting. Measures are used to promote improvement, not to identify poor performance and
penalize the low performers. They should be sensitive to the improvements made.
6. Cost: Of course, the bottom line is that cost and profit must reflect an improved financial
picture, as shown by the cost of poor quality system and other financial data. In addition, the cost
7. Visible: Facility-wide measures should be posted in a central location, such as the lunch or
break room, where everyone can see them. Likewise, unit measures should be posted at the
8. Timely: Financial and accounting data are often presented too late to be actionable. This may
require that measurements are taken hourly, daily, or weekly rather than monthly or quarterly as
rather than financial. Data needs to be measured, analyzed, and evaluated with respect to the
desired goals so that the information can be used effectively in decision making.
9. Aligned: A comprehensive set of measures and indicators tied to customer and organizational
performance requirements provides a way to align all activities with organizational goals.
10. Results: Key result measures need to be guided and balanced by the interests of all
stakeholders customers, employees, stockholders, suppliers, the public, and the community.
Use of these criteria will improve the suitability of the selected measures.
STRATEGY
The quality council has the responsibility for developing a strategic measurement system to
ensure all measures are integrated into a total system of measures. To do this, they will use the
core values, goals, mission, and vision statements, objectives and criteria, and the strategic
measurement system.
An example of a system that emphasizes percent improvement might contain the functions and
Quality
Cost
Reliability
Innovation
• Percent increase in new product sales revenue as a percent of total sales revenue
determine which processes or sub-processes are critical to providing input for the strategic
system. This activity is followed by assigning responsibility for the collection, analysis, and
dissemination of the data. Each month, the quality council should meet to monitor current
activities and plan future ones. To assist them, a report package is prepared consisting of
performance measures, narrative reports on competition, opportunities, and pertinent events, and
system audits.
Cost of Quality
“Cost of quality” is an approach to measure and track financial impact of various quality
activities. Until 1950s, the concept did not explicitly extend to the quality function and the
activities related to inspection, testing and audits were merely categorized as “overheads”. In the
1950s, Dr. Armand Feigenbaum suggested to consider reporting systems focusing on quality
costs. Dr. Joseph Juran also started emphasizing the need to speak of the language of upper
management which is money. As the upper management best understands the language of
money, reporting cost of quality can help in prioritizing appropriate improvement activities to
quality control. These costs were not only limited to factory operations, but also extended to
support functions. Figure 6-4 shows that the warranty costs and scrap costs are clearly visible,
but the financial impact of poor quality is hidden like an iceberg. The term "Quality Cost" means
different to different people, and some equate it with the cost of running the Quality Department.
These are costs which are associated with the defects or non-conforming situations that are found
prior to shipment of the product to customer. These costs can be reduced to zero if no defect
existed prior to shipment. Whenever quality appraisals are carried out, there exists a possibility
complete replacement or scrap ping. The total cost of carrying out re-inspection/re-tests, failure
analysis, evaluation, disposition and subsequent actions are included in the internal failure cost.
In summary, this includes all material, labor,energy and overhead expenses that are wasted on
• Internal scrap
Often the defects are found only after the product reaches the dealer or customer. Such costs are
included in the external failure costs. This component of quality cost also disappears if there are
• Complaints: Complaints from customer are analyzed, resolved and communication is sent to
• Warranty claims: Recall of vehicles for defects, costs involved in repairs or replacement of
product during warranty period, the cost associated with receipt, evaluation and replacement of
• Retrofit and recall costs: It is often required to modify or update the product in order to
incorporate new design changes in order to overcome design deficiencies. There are several
cases in recent past, where automobiles were recalled due to failure investigation reports on the
• Liabilities and penalties: Insurance claims and contractual obligatory claims are included in
• Allowances and customer goodwill: The cost of concessions offered to the customer due to
substandard product, poor quality or costs incurred because the customer is not completely
satisfied with the quality because his expectations were higher than those delivered to him by the
product.
• External failure costs will also include lost sales and loss of goodwill although these are
difficult to measure.
APPRAISAL COSTS
These are the costs incurred while conducting inspection, tests, and several other planned
evaluations with
the purpose of determining whether the product (or service) confirms to its stated requirements.
Appraisal cost
also includes various activities related to quality system audit, cost of legal compliance, supplier
surveillance,
product quality audits, costs for calibration of testing equipment, etc. Thus, cost of maintaining
Examples include:
• Design reviews
• Software testing
• Set-up inspection
• Performance testing by customer
• Calibration of gauges
• Calibration of testing facility
• Receiving inspection of purchased parts
PREVENTION COSTS
These are the costs of all such activities undertaken to prevent defects in design, development,
purchase, labor and other aspects of creation of the product/service. Prevention costs lower the
other costs (failure cost and appraisal cost). Prevention is achieved by examining previous failure
data and developing action plans for incorporating into the basic system so that the same failures/
• Staff training
• Product Quality Planning
• Design and Process FMEA
• Tolerance analysis before design release
• Computer aided design and analysis
• Process capability study for process qualification
• Part selection for better reliability
• Designed experiment for optimum settings of the product
Cost of quality is the addition of all the four categories and is often expressed as percent sales.
Figure 6-5 shows a broad-level relationship between cost of prevention + appraisal and failure
costs. There is a quality level at which the total cost of quality is minimum. The quality level for
minimum cost has been challenged by Six Sigma professionals. They argue that the achieving
the five or six sigma level of performance dramatically reduce cost of appraisal and prevention
Data collection and reporting on cost of poor quality is often performed by the accountant, but it
is important for the quality manager to work closely with the accountant. The quality manager
should initially collect the quality related information in the existing accounting format and
present it to the management. The next step is to appoint a task force to measure cost of quality,
and the task force should propose a list of categories, identify responsibilities and propose
schedule for data collection. Actual data collection can be performed on either estimation basis
or on detailed and more accurate basis. For early stages of quality improvement, estimated data
is often adequate, but some quality cost data crosses the departmental borders and requires a
detailed study. It should be noted that significant factors are often hidden because the existing
While sharing the results of quality cost with the management, quality manager should relate it to
the overall business measures. It will have great impact on the management if cost of quality
relates to the other figures, such as total sales, total profit, etc., with which managers are familiar.
For this purpose, some base line is required and the examples are:
1. As a percentage of sales: Most of the financial reports extensively use total sales or business
value as a key performance index. When quality costs are related to total sales, its impact on top
management is inevitable. It gives valuable input for decision making and arriving at annual
planning.
2. As compared to profit: In the initial studies of quality cost, it comes as a surprise that quality
3. As related to production: Quality cost per unit (say dollar) of production cost is also a
commonly used index. Production cost consists of material, labor and overheads and is often
used in several other indices. It can be similarly indexed with design cost or purchase cost.
4. As related to unit of production: Quality cost per unit, such as an engine, one meter of cloth,
etc. is a very simple index and effective for comparison when production lines are similar. In
Accounting departments normally issue quality cost reports. The report contains quality costs per
month (or any suitable period) for each element and also data of the previous year. Comparison
of current costs and historical data enables the management to arrive at budgets for next period
show specific trend, the percentage shows some reduction due to increase in sales.
Cost of Quality is a powerful management tool for focusing attention on quality management.
The most important idea is that failures have a root cause and these causes are preventable. To
reduce the cost of quality, management should take a structured approach and undertake several
improvement projects. Management techniques like structured problem solving, Kaizen, Six
Sigma are often used. Project teams should be selected in such a manner that key persons form
Scoring System
The system for scoring applicant responses is based on three evaluation dimensions: (1)
Approach refers to how the applicant addresses the item requirements. The factors used to
of training, with most of the time devoted to the scoring system. A simpler system is given by the
sample self-evaluation, which is shown in the next section. This approach would be more
Sample Self-Evaluation
Applying for the Baldrige Award is an assessment process that requires organizations to carry
out self-assessment. The worksheets are available as part of the award application and can be
found on the web-site www. baldrige.nist.gov. Applicants or aspiring organizations should use
subjective judgment to grade how well the organization confirms to the specific criteria by
assigning numerical rating on the scale of 1 to 10. The scores on each sub-category are added
and normalized, and the individual and total scores are used as a baseline to monitor progress.
Once the self-assessments indicate a satisfactory and desired level, the organization can then
Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award (RGNQA) was instituted by the Bureau of Indian
Standards in 1991,
with a view to encourage Indian manufacturing and service organizations to strive for excellence
and giving special recognition to those who are considered to be the leaders of quality movement
in India. This award is intended to generate interest and involvement of Indian Industry in quality
programs, drive the products and services to higher levels of quality and equip industry to meet
The award has been christened after India’s late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, recognizing the
new thrust he had given to the quality movement in India, which would enable India to march
into 21st century with pride. RGNQA helps Indian Industry to improve quality by
• Encouraging Indian industry to make significant improvements, in the quality for maximizing
• Recognizing the achievements of those organizations, which have improved the quality of their
• Providing specific guidance to other organizations that wish to learn how to achieve excellence
adopted by the award-winning organizations to change their culture and achieve eminence.
The award has been designed in line with similar awards like Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award in the U.S., Deming Prize in Japan and European Quality Award.
A new approach to strategic management was developed in the early 1990s by Robert Kaplan
They named this system as Balanced Score Card (BSC). Recognizing some of the weaknesses
The BSC is a not merely a measurement system but a management system that enables the
organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. Financial
measures tell the story of past, but the stakeholders are more concerned about the future and
long-term capabilities and more so, on how to achieve the goals. BSC approach provides a
mechanism to achieve feedback on internal business processes and external output such as
customer satisfaction.
BSC is a medium to convert vision and objectives into a strategy and measurable objectives to
provide direction to the organization. In today’s world mere balance sheet is not adequate to read
the performance.
BSC suggests that we review the organization from four perspectives to develop metrics, collect
In order to achieve growth and progress, an organization must establish performance measures
for itself. These measures should include all aspects critical for business, such as human
administration, etc. Management should track the metrics on regular basis to identify problems
and allocate resources. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is an annual
award to recognize organizations from U.S. in the field of performance excellence. The award
criteria support a systems approach in maintaining organization-wide goal alignment and goal-
based diagnosis. Other national awards like Deming Award and Rajiv Gandhi National Quality