(QuEst Forum: Dallas) -- QuEST Forum unveiled its inaugural report on the state of quality in the telecommunications industry at the 2009 Asia Pacific Best Practices Conference, which was held Oct. 20–22 in Shanghai. QuEST Forum pursues the goal of global telecommunications quality and industrywide performance excellence through its TL 9000 standard.
Building on ISO 9001, TL 9000 provides the telecommunications industry with a consistent set of quality expectations that parallel rapid technology changes and customer expectations. TL 9000 is set apart from other quality management systems by its performance data requirement, and as the keeper of the TL 9000 data, QuEST Forum is in the unique position to quantify the state of telecom industry quality.
To ensure the creation of a credible study containing independently audited data, QuEST Forum engaged acknowledged communications technologies experts from worldwide voice, data, and video companies, such as AT&T, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, BigBand, Telmar, Adtran, and Juniper. Furthermore, QuEST Forum also utilized the expertise of the University of Texas at Dallas to support the team with cutting-edge techniques and tools.
Since the amount of TL 9000 data is vast, covering 47 TL 9000 measurements, 126 product categories, and 869 registrations, this study focuses on a single TL 9000 measurement—on-time delivery—across a sample of representative product categories throughout a two-year period during 2007–2008.
On-time delivery measures the timeliness of the delivery of products and services to customers. This measurement is used to evaluate organizations on their on-time delivery performance as they strive to meet expectations on orders of any kind from the customer. However, it is not the intent of this measurement to assess an organization’s ability to meet its commitments for the release of new designs.
During the two-year on-time delivery measurement study, key findings included the following:
A major premise behind QuEST Forum’s inception was that as organizations used TL 9000 data to drive improvement, the net effect over time would be an overall improvement in the quality of the telecom industry. While there are many factors that could be responsible for any shift in measurements, it is apparent that the founding intent of the QuEST Forum, and the intent of QuEST Forum and TL 9000 to improve telecom quality is being realized.
To download the on-time delivery measurement study in its entirety, click here. To request a hard copy of the study, please contact QuEST Forum at information@questforum.org.
QuEST Forum is a unique collaboration of service providers and suppliers dedicated to telecom supply chain quality and performance. We unify the global telecommunications community through the implementation of TL 9000, a telecom-specific quality standard, collaboration in our work groups and regional hubs, emphasis on learning and sharing industry best practices, and the creation and delivery of reports and benchmarks.
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Comments
Unsupported conclusion?
I read the article, and then also the referenced report. I fail to see how the conclusion made (TL9000 metrics have succeeded in creating improved quality) can be scientifically justified based on the data presented. The results are quite mixed; the trend concluded from the results is significant only because of very large positive results from one product category.
More importantly, there is no evidence linking any proposed mechanism from simply reporting the measurements to the improvements in the reported results. And no alternative mechanisms for improvement in this metric were explored or considered.
Personally, I have observed that on time delivery in ANY industry has a direct, inverse relationship to the general economic conditions in that industry. As industry slows, orders slow as customers make efforts to reduce inventory and match purchasing activities to sales. This in turn makes on time delivery for suppliers much less difficult, due to lower resouce restraints. In my opinion, this study has just demonstrated that the Telecommuncations Industry sector experienced a significant economic downturn from Jan 2007 to Jan 2009 due to the worldwide recession.