Is 99.9% "Good Enough"?

While doing some research on the concept of "Good Enough Video" today, I came across a video which asks the question - "Is 99.9% Good Enough"? The video is not on YouTube and I can't embed it in this post - so click here to see a full preview of the video. In the first example it gives, if 99.9% is "good enough" - 470 entries in the New Webster Dictionary would be misspelled. Here are some other examples (USA figures from www.sixsigmaspc.com):

Image link to cheezburger.com.

• 3,000 newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year
• 4,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year
• 400 letters per hour which never arrive at their destination

Yikes! Like many others I'm sure, 99.9% sounded OK to me. While 100% is theoretically possible to achieve, the Six Sigma quality standard measures the top quality as 99.9997%, which is the equivalent of 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). If this was applied to the above three instances, the figures would look like:

• 10 newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year
• 13  incorrect drug prescriptions per year
• 1 letter per hour which never arrives at its destination

That's better!

As the video states (quoting from Thomas Fuller) "Good is not good - where better is required". So the next time somebody says to you that something is "good enough" - think again.