2026-06-01 / For quality teams / 4 min read

Quality KPIs for a 100-person manufacturer

Choose measures that help an owner make decisions: escapes, rework, delivery, closure, and capability.

Start with customer escapes, internal defects, rework hours, on-time delivery, overdue CAPAs, supplier escapes, and capability for critical characteristics.

A practical route

Define the denominator, freeze the definition, show the trend, and annotate changes. Pair outcomes with leading signals such as overdue calibration, missing training evidence, and open audit actions.

What good looks like

The process is visible at the point of work. The person doing the task knows the current requirement, the person approving it can see objective evidence, and the owner can tell whether the control worked. Keep the record small enough to complete in the moment: requirement, result, exception, owner, date, and next decision.

The failure mode to avoid

Do not solve a recurring process problem with a longer form alone. Watch one real job, find the handoff that breaks, and change the workflow or responsibility. Then sample the next few records to confirm the change stuck. The output should be a record someone else can verify. Use the metrics module. to keep that chain together.

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