Create Date: August 26, 2024
Last Modified Date: December 6, 2024
If you are trying to calculate defects per million opportunities, or DPMO for short, you will need the following variables:
Your results will represent the number of defects that can be expected if 1,000,000 units were produced. This number can be greater or less than the number of defects you entered into the defects field. This number can help you gauge how much quality control you may have to do as well as giving you a better idea of your current quality and production efficiency. The lower that this number is the better the production quality is, the higher the worse it is.
Finding the DPMO of a manufacturer or your own manufacturing can be an important metric to know. You can use this tool to easily get that value. The steps involved with using this tool include:
We currently are running a manufacturing facility where we make door knobs. We want to get a better idea of how well we are doing so we want to find our DPMO value. Our latest batch was a total of 250,000 units and 15 of them had defects. Per unit, there is a total of 5 defect opportunities. We can use this tool to find the DPMO by entering 15 into the number of defects. Then, we will enter 250,000 into the number of units field. Finally, we can enter 5 into the final field, the number of defect opportunities per unit.
We are now ready to hit calculate to find our DPMO. Once we do, we find that we have a DPMO of 12. This means we can expect to see a total of about 12 defected units if we produce 1,000,000 of them.
3.4 Defects per million is an extremely difficult number to achieve and maintain as that is nearly no defects at all. It means a million units or processes may pass with only 3.4 defects occurring, near perfection.
To calculate DPMO, you use the formula: DPMO = [total number of defects in sample / (sample size units x number of defect opportunities per unit in the sample)] x 1,000,000.
