The categories
The order is deliberate: safety comes first, because no result is worth an injury.
- S – Safety: injuries, near misses, hazards raised, safety observations.
- Q – Quality: defects, scrap, rework, customer complaints, first-pass yield.
- D – Delivery: output against plan, schedule adherence, on-time in full.
- C – Cost: downtime, overtime, material usage, productivity.
Common variants:
| Variant | Extra letter | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| SQDCP | P – People | Attendance, skills cover, engagement |
| SQDIP | I – Inventory, P – Productivity or People | Material flow and stock levels |
| SQDCM | M – Morale | Team wellbeing and engagement |
How an SQDC board is laid out
Each category usually has:
- A daily status indicator. A letter-shaped calendar or tracker coloured green or red for each day of the month.
- A trend chart. Performance against the target over recent weeks.
- A Pareto or issue list. The main causes of misses.
- An action list. Owner, due date and status for each countermeasure.
Using the board in a tier meeting
The team leader walks through the categories in order. Green days get a brief mention; red days get discussion of what happened, containment and who owns the follow-up. Issues outside the team's control are marked for escalation to the next tier. The higher tiers often use the same categories, so an issue can be traced up and down the system.
Common mistakes
- Choosing measures the team cannot influence.
- Updating the board after the meeting, or not at all.
- Filling it with charts nobody discusses.
- Showing all green when problems are known, which destroys trust in the board.
Example
A pharmaceutical packing team marks a red Q for the day after a label misprint. The board's action list records the containment, an owner from quality and a date, and the issue is flagged for tier 2 because it involves the artwork supplier.