Defects per Opportunities (DPO)

  Defects per opportunity is a common metric that can be used to indicate the number of defects in a process or product per opportunity.  It is calculated by dividing the total number of defects in the sample lot or batch by the total number of opportunities.

Example

A team determines that each shirt can have 10 opportunities for defects we have 500 shirts in our sample lot.  This gives us 5,000 opportunities (10 opportunities x # in sample batch) for a defect to occur.  The inspector observed 50 defects in the sample lot.  Making our DPO .01 (50 divided by 5,000).  To learn more visit our recent blog post on Listen to the Gemba entitled Calculating Defects Per Opportunity (DPO).

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