Quality Objectives:

Quality objectives are a part of an organization’s quality policy and consist of specific objectives and the time frame for completing them. The quality objectives must be selected carefully. Selecting objectives that are not naturally possible can cause frustration and disillusionment. Examples of acceptable quality objectives might be: to train all members of the organization on the quality policy and objectives before the end of the current fiscal year, to set up baseline measurements of specific processes by the end of the current quarter, to define the responsibility and authority for meeting the organization’s quality objectives down to each member of the organization by the end of the current fiscal year.

The quality objectives are the main method used by companies to focus the goals from the Quality Policy into plans for improvement. The Quality Policy is created with the Customer Requirements in mind, then quality objectives are linked back to the Customer Requirements through the Quality Policy. The quality objectives take the goals stated in the Quality Policy and turned these into statements for improvement against which plans can be made.

Good quality objectives should be:

• Be obtainable

• Define specific goals

• Be understandable

• State specific deadlines

Some common types of quality objective are as follows: - Defects: A goal for conformance to specifications such as 0.1% of items failing quality control and 0% of products being shipped with a defect.

• Durability: A target for the minimum durability of a product such as 20,000 hours of use.

• Efficiency: The efficiency of products and services. For example, a conversion efficiency goal for solar panels.

• Performance: The performance of product and services as measured by a figure of merit.

• Stability: The stability of a service measured by incidents. For example, a software-as-a-service target to reduce production incidents by 30%.

• Reliability: Reliability goals such as a target of zero bugs in a software release.

• Availability: A target for the uptime of a service such as 99.99%.