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Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO)Sigma levels determine the rate of defects and are a standardized measure of the error rate of a process, based on the Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO) estimate. The Sigma Level estimate is a long-term estimate of the process defect opportunities. As the name suggests, Defects per million opportunities (DPMO) is the number of defects in a process per one million opportunities. If you have a surgeon who is performing your surgery, are you comfortable with a surgical infection rate or negative outcome rate at the 2nd sigma level using this chart? Are you comfortable with an airline that has a crash rate at the 3rd sigma level? Probably not. Defects per million opportunities is calculated by the number of defects, divided by the number of units times the number of opportunities, multiplied by one million. What is the accepted number of defects per million opportunities for Six Sigma?At the Six Sigma level, a business process produces only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Not all businesses need to operate at such as efficient level to be profitable, but the closer you can get to this level the less re-work and waste your processes produce. How can I learn more about DPMO?In process improvement efforts, defects per million opportunities or DPMO (or nonconformities per million opportunities (NPMO)) is a measure of process performance. It is defined as A defect can be defined as a nonconformance of a quality characteristic (e.g. strength, width, response time) to its specification. DPMO is stated in opportunities per million units for convenience: Processes that are considered highly capable (e.g., processes of Six Sigma quality) are those that experience fewer than 3.4 defects per million opportunities (or services provided). Note that DPMO differs from reporting defective parts per million (PPM) in that it comprehends the possibility that a unit under inspection may be found to have multiple defects of the same type or may have multiple types of defects. Identifying specific opportunities for defects (and therefore how to count and categorize defects) is an art[citation needed], but generally organizations consider the following when defining the number of opportunities per unit:
Other measures[edit]Other measures of process performance include:
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What does 3.4 defects per million opportunities mean?The term implies high-quality performance because a process performing at a Six Sigma level allows only 3.4 defects per one million opportunities. The higher the sigma level the better the quality of the product or service and the fewer the defects.
What is a good defects per million?It's also possible to translate DPMO to a Six Sigma level. The goal is to reach 3.4 defects per 1 million opportunities.
What is 3 Sigma defect rate?All Sigma levels measure the maximum number of allowable defects per one million parts. For Three Sigma, this means there can be an error rate of three parts per million, or 66,800 defective parts.
Is a specific measure of quality representing 3.4 defects per million opportunities?Six Sigma according to General Electric
To achieve Six Sigma Quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.
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