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Metric

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Definition

A measurement used to characterize or quantify key quality/process measures. It provides a basis for businesses to baseline and compare performance and to validate improvements made.

It is often said: "What gets measured gets done". Measurements communicate values and priorities to an organization. Therefore, the selection of appropriate metrics is an essential starting point for process improvement.

Some qualities of a good metric are:
It has a well-documented, unambiguous operational definition.
Ideally, it is measured on a continuous scale which affords higher information than discrete measurements.
It meets the fundamental metrological standards of accuracy, precision, repeatability and bias.

Examples

Examples of some metrics:

Productivity: Labor Productivity, Equivalent Units, Total People Productivity, Sales Per Employee

Quality: Defects Per Unit, First Pass Yield, Line Item Fill Rate, Parts Per Million Defective (PPM), DPMO, Cpk, Cp

Total Productive Maintenance: Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), Operational Effectiveness Rate (OEE), Uptime, Preventive Maintenance %