Is 99.9% Good Enough?

Is 99.9% Good Enough?

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I recently saw an article about companies throughout the world that have established quality goals of 99.9% for their products and service. In other words, they only allow a one tenth of one percent margin of error in production of products and customer satisfaction.

At first glance this quality goal seems impressive. After all, consumer expectations are pretty low these days. But do our customers deserve less than 100%?

Here are some startling statistics that help to remind us that we should always aim for 100% when it comes to delivering an acceptable level of quality for our products and service.

If a 99.9% quality goal was good enough, then:

-12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

-2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers.

-2 planes landing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport will be unsafe every day.

-315 entries in Webster’s Dictionary will be misspelled.

-880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.



-5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat.

-291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly.

-3,056 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.

Set a goal to deliver excellent service 100% of the time and customer loyalty will grow. Remember, customer loyalty is created by exceeding not meeting customer expectations. Loyalty is earned when customers can depend on consistent, outstanding service.

Hi Devender,
Your post is very thought provoking.
Well illustrated.
But there should always be room for improvement.
Only then the drive inide us will force us to pursue what seems to be afar.
You are here discussing the quality part in manufacturing and services industry. Think about 99.9% in HR.
If the HR dept is 100% perfect and there are no suggestions and complaints, do you thnk that makes a perfect organisation? I feel the organisation is alive and kicking only when there are suggestions and scope for improvement. Else it might become stale.
Let 100% be ideal, a non-achevable one, yet our aim shall be that.
Let there be an exponential growth i.e, let the perfection be 99.9 % to 99.99% to 99.999% to 99.9999% and never 100%.
Thanks for the post again
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sree

Hi Mr. Sree,
I am totally agree with you. 99.9% can only be applicable in manufacturing. HR can never be 100% perfect coz you keep on learning and improvise your processes. Feedback is really very important for HR whether it is positive or negative.

Hi,
I am also agree with Mr. Sree. But, in manufacturing process also one can never achieve 100%. It will make both stable.
No suggestion, no ideas, no creativety if 100% achieved.
And 100% can never be possible as human wants are unlimited and they can never be fulfilled 100%. Changes occur frequently.
Practise make man perfect.