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Manufacturing · Definition

Zero Defects

A quality standard treating any defect rate above nothing as unacceptable.

Zero defects sets the target for defective output at none, rejecting the idea of an acceptable quality level. The intent is behavioural: a tolerated defect rate tends to become the rate you actually get.

In practice it directs effort at prevention — mistake-proofing, in-process checks, root-cause analysis — rather than at inspection, which only sorts good from bad after the cost has already been incurred.

Also called

  • right first time
  • acceptable quality level

Zero Defects is not just a definition here

Manufacturing runs on this vocabulary every day in AWRA OpsHub — 14 of our 257 glossary terms describe things the platform actually does.