The metric tells you how good your process is towards committing mistakes. There are five steps to calculate process’s Defects-per-Million-Opportunities. The first four stages of DPMO calculation are similar to that of computing Defects per Opportunity or DPO. The first step is to determine the total number of units to be sampled. In other words, you have to determine the sample group size. As a thumb rule, the sample size should be small enough to be manageable, yet large enough to reflect whatever problem is undermining the process. Grouping or merging related or similar defects into one category.Focusing on routine, rather than rare defects or errors.Focusing on places or process steps where something can go wrong and not on the ways it can go wrong.Creating a list of potential defects or errors per unit of process or product or service customers will care about.That means, opportunities will have to be defined with the help of following methods: The second step is to determine the number of defect opportunities per unit. Going through this process, you have to keep the Voice of Customer in mind. Some characteristics of the products may be important to clients and others might be nice-to-haves. Focus on the features that will impact on customer satisfaction and make sure that the traits are measurable.

The third step is to determine the total number of defect opportunities ONLY for the sample size under consideration.

This is done by multiplying the number of units in the sample group with the number of defect opportunities per unit. The fourth step is to count the defective opportunities within the sample group.

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