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DPMO (Defects Per Million Opportunities)

Defects per million opportunities or DPMO (or nonconformities per million opportunities (NPMO)) is a measure of process performance. This is expressed as the number of defects in a million measurements and defines the number of defects per unit produced by a process. Highly capable processes are those that experience fewer than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

What Small and Midsize Businesses Need to Know About DPMO (Defects Per Million Opportunities)

In Six Sigma, a measure of a process's performance is its defects per million opportunities (DPMO), or the number of defects in relation to the number of times that opportunity is provided. Businesses use DPMO in product and service quality management to detect flaws and improve the quality of the products and services that they provide.

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