Setting KPIs for your quality system management

Quality is the key for every manufacturing plant. Without high quality, you won't be able to market effectively and show others that you have better products from your competitors.Quality allows you to have better products to sell as they have a longer lifespan from other products and the quality justifies the price you set on your products. As you have a higher quality standard for your company, you will also be able to avoid the expensive product returns based on a year-long return policy.

What are key performance indicators and how do they impact your manufacturing plant? Key performance indicators, commonly called KPIs allow you to set a standard for various systems within the company.KPIs are used to help a company define and measure various goals that improve or implement a standard of quality.

A KPI is a quantifiable measurement that must be agreed to within all of the different levels of management and they need to reflect the various "success factors" that are described within the company's policies. An example of a KPI includes measuring your error ratio or measuring the income you get from your returning customers. As you set quantifiable measures, you will easily be able to see where you need to focus more time and energy in order to improve the company.

The KPIs are not going to be the same within the company. The manufacturing line itself will have very different KPIs from the sales side of the company or even the overall KPIs that are used to improve the company. No matter what the different KPIs must all have one thing in common and that is to have the in line with the overall goals of the company. Use your mission statement as a guideline to help you set KPIs that will improve the quality of your products and services.

Quality system management does focus on the quality of the products along with the quality of customer service. You need to have each one of your employees understand how their interaction within the company impacts the quality of the products and the quality to the customers.

When you set KPIs, remember to set them with an indicator of value. You need to be able to define and measure quality so it is vital to look for KPIs that you can easily define and measure. Worthless KPUs can be a big problem for your company as there is no way to measure them and they do you absolutely no good and simply waste time.

In order to set better KPIs for your company, you need to consider setting targets for them. Setting targets is a great option because you will easily be able to define the KPIs and you can have an easy time reducing defects and also focusing on improving quality within the organization.

To avoid the problems of others, you will need to select KPIs that are focused on the success to the organization, not only focused on limited things. You also need to focus on keeping the KPIs small in order to make them easier to achieve and to keep the attention of your employees on the goal, which can often be a challenge to some organizations.

This is why it's not unusual to only have about 3-4 KPIs for your company. Don't think this is bad or an indication that you have chosen poor KPIs. Instead you will have better KPIs and they will help to improve the overall goals of the company. The other thing to note with KPIs is that you often have many of them that breakdown into smaller goals. This is a big part of quality system management as you will set goals for smaller units and they will roll into the larger KPIs and the overall goals of the company.