Patent ID: 8122425

Claim:
A system including a processor for operating a quality plan in a product development organization comprising a plurality of members and having quality objectives for product development projects and analyzing a quality metrics report, the system comprising: the processor defining a set of quality processes adapted to quality objectives required by an organization, wherein the set of quality processes includes: a tracking process for identifying an issue in the product development projects, the tracking process being an internal project management tracking process that reports a status of current risks according to a priority of a risk issue and a target date for resolution of the risk issue; a meeting set-up and reporting process for preparing and conducting meetings among a plurality of members of the organization; a daily headlights reporting process for providing communications among members of the organization, wherein the daily headlights reporting process comprises a headlight report being generated by a team leader, achievements of a day, changes to a project plan, assistance needed for a project, potential catastrophes associated with the project, and wherein issue records are created daily from consolidated headlight reports to initiate corrective actions to the project, and wherein multiple executive reports are consolidated weekly into a summary report; a documentation process for reviewing and accepting documents generated by the product development projects; an inspection process for determining deliverables generated by the product development projects to be reworked; and a metrics process for producing metrics for the data relative to the product development projects; the processor defining a set of computer implemented quality tools to collect data relative to product development projects, said quality tools comprising at least one database to store said collected data; the processor aggregating multiple quality processes into a set of stored data to generate a respective quality report; the processor analyzing each respective quality report to detect problems in the product development projects; the processor using results of the means for analyzing to initiate actions to resolve detected problems, thereby improving quality of the product development projects; the processor consolidating, at a first predetermined frequency, the headlights reports into a single executive report to be distributed to an executive distribution list; the processor recording issue items in an issue memory area based on data of the single executive report; and the processor generating, at a second predetermined frequency, a headlight summary based on multiple executive reports, wherein a quality management office consolidates the headlight reports daily into the single executive report.