The Six Sigma Handbook, Revised and Expanded, 2nd Edition

2.1. ATTRIBUTES OF GOOD METRICS

The choice of what to measure is crucial to the success of the organization. Improperly chosen metrics lead to suboptimal behavior and can lead people away from the organization's goals instead of towards them. Joiner (1994) suggests three systemwide measures of performance: overall customer satisfaction, total cycle time, and first-pass quality. An effective metric for quantifying first-pass quality is total cost of poor quality (later in this chapter). Once chosen, the metrics must be communicated to the members of the organization. To be useful, the employee must be able to influence the metric through his performance, and it must be clear precisely how the employee's performance influences the metric.

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