CTQ AND CTQ FLOWDOWN

Description

A CTQ (Critical to Quality) is a measurable quality criterion of a process. Using a CTQ Flowdown, you translate the customer requirement and the project objective into measurable criteria.

When

In the Measuring phase and in daily steering.

Goals

A CTQ gives direction to a project and makes a project objective measurable. Through a CTQ Flowdown, the relationship between strategic goals, project objective and measurable process performance (CTQs) becomes clear.

A project objective can be divided into one or more CTQs.

 Steps

Customers have all kinds of requirements and wishes (see also technology - Voice of the Customer). These are often in the areas of speed, quality, cost or service.

To make targeted improvements, you then translate the customer requirement into a project objective and a measurable process performance (CTQ). For this, you can use a CTQ Flowdown.

The CTQs are then translated into concrete measurements (see technique - operational definition).

With a CTQ Flowdown, you make the following insights:

  1. Who is the customer of the process? CUSTOMER external customer/finance department
  2. What does the customer demand? CTS quality/speed
  3. What do we want to achieve? OBJECTIVE reliable order/timely input
  4. Which measurable performance is being improved? CTQ # wrong orders/throughput time orders

 Examples

The following diagram shows an example of a CTQ Flowdown around improving the order registration process:

Figure: A CTQ Flowdown of a process at an insurer

Template CTQ Flowdown (click <here> to download it)

Tips:

  • Involve the (project) team in creating/defining a CTQ Flowdown.
  • In case of multiple CTQs, see if you can pick them up one by one.

For more questions on this topic

+31 6 20 49 09 82 Andre van Hofwegen