Quality Improvement Trends in Information and Communication Technologies Companies Using the TL 9000 Quality Management System

DALLAS, Sept. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- QuEST Forum released another report in the ongoing series on the state of quality in the information and communication technologies (ICT) industry on 11 September at the 2012 Americas Best Practices Conference in Chicago, Illinois. 

Since 2009 the QuEST Forum Performance Data Reports (PDR) Team has produced a series of industry papers analyzing the TL 9000 third party audited data with the goal of objectively assessing the performance of companies certified to the TL 9000 QMS. The first paper, released in October 2009, detailed the dramatic improvements shown in the On-Time Delivery (OTD) of products and services by companies certified to TL 9000 during a two year period from 2007 to 2008. The second paper focused on the Number of Problem Reports (NPR) and Fix Response Time (FRT). The third paper studied Return Rates while the fourth in the series focused on Edge Router, Product Category 1.2.9.2, trends over a five year period. This paper, the fifth in the series, studies simple and complex wireless devices which includes the ubiquitous smartphone.

Highlights of the study include:

• The combined Number of Major Problem Reports for simple and complex wireless devices improved by 12% during the two-year study period.
• For the Number of Minor Problem Reports, there was a 23% improvement over the time period plotted while simple devices more than doubled the reports per unit. 
• Fix Response Time performance for both simple and complex wireless devices was excellent for Minor and Major Problem Reports over the two year period.  During that time, Industry Average performance never fell below 94%. 
• One Year Return Rates showed steady downward improvement for the complex units from 5.3% to 3.4% with approximately a 35% decrease over the two-year period.  From both a user experience and business standpoint (i.e. significantly reduced Cost of Poor Quality due to returns) these improvement trends in return rates are very encouraging.  Simple handsets also saw major improvements from approximately 2.5% down to 0.5%. 

To obtain a complete copy of the report, please visit the TL 9000 website at www.tl9000.org or download via the following link http://tl9000.org/resources/documents/12_SimpleComplex_WirelessDevices_Final.pdf.

Formed in 1998, QuEST Forum is a unique collaboration of information and communication technologies (ICT) network operators and suppliers across the world dedicated to improving operational and supply chain quality and performance. QuEST Forum unifies the global ICT community through the implementation of TL 9000, an ICT specific quality management system that is built on ISO 9001. Performance benchmarking and a broad array of common metrics support both the rapid industry adoption of new technologies and the consistent quality of communication networks around the world.

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