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Defects per Unit (DPU)

The average number of defects per unit. The ratio of defects to unit is the universal measure of quality.

Given:

D: number of Defects

U: number of Units

Formula:

Defects Per Unit

DPU may be estimated if the Throughput Yield (also called First Pass Yield) is known:

Take this table shown below as an example. Let’s say that ten nails were produced at a manufacturing facility and each nail has five ways (opportunities) it can be defective. If any one of the five characteristics fails, then the entire nail is considered defective.



Table



There is a possibility of 50 total defects if each nail had all five characteristics (opportunities) fail. The total number of defects (D) is 2+1+3+2+3+4+2+2 = 19.

The number of defectives is 8.

8 out of 10 nails contained one or more defects qualifying them as defective.

From the table:

D = 19 total defects were found

U = 10 units (nails)

DPU = 1.9 defects per nail

If all these defects could come from a SINGLE process (not in reality for this case, these types of defects occur from different operations), rearranging the formula above the TPY is:

TPY calculation from DPU









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