Approach to Quality

Cisco's approach to quality is simply:

• Focusing on our customer
  
• Meeting their needs
  
• Delivering the highest value for them
  

The first step in our dedication to quality is reflected in the way we communicate and act upon customer feedback.

• An on-line ongoing customer satisfaction survey helps us discern gaps between customer expectations and our priorities, offerings and products. It also provides us insight on where our customers would like us to improve as well as where we might overinvest - things that we do well, but that aren't priorities for customers. We can, and do, move resources from those overinvested areas to areas of opportunity to create unprecedented value for our customers.
• Through mechanisms such as Technical Advisory Boards (TAB), Customer Advocacy Advisory Council, Advanced Engineering Services (AES), availability programs and executive briefings, customers influence our goals and objectives, products, acquisitions, and our business practices. We not only strive to offer our customers the best networking products, service, and support, but we also constantly seek to understand their preferences, values, and their changing needs so that we can respond with new products and services.
• Transactional feedback on each Cisco touch helps us to improve operationally.

Cisco combines a progressive approach to gathering customer information with Quality processes and tools, such as:

• The Great Engineering Methodology (GEM), a concurrent engineering lifecycle approach
• Product and Software Quality Improvement Plans, Goals and Metrics
  
• Product design performance prediction compared to actual results
  
• Defect Reduction Teams
  
• Quality Summaries
  
• Engineering Failure Analysis
  
• Manufacturing Autotest System, shared with ecosystem manufacturers
  
• Distributed Defect Tracking System (DDTS), provides internal process support and customer access to known bugs for risk assessment
  
• System, regression and test labs
  
• Problem solving methodology
  
• ISO-9001-2000 (International Standards Organization) quality and business management systems audit and certification processes.

These key components of our Quality Management System represent the cornerstone of our closed loop process for delivering products of the highest quality to our customers.

Cisco has implemented systems for measuring and managing customer loyalty within all levels of our organization. Using loyalty segmentation data allows us to easily explore how different segments respond to different possibilities so that we can choose the most effective way of allocating resources to please our all our customers.

Meeting our customers' needs means continuously improving our systems and processes, as well as adopting approaches and practices that have demonstrated their value. Via the links to the left, you will find information on our Business Management System and the various processes for integrating customer knowledge into our business strategies for both immediate success and sustainable, long-term growth.

Today, more than ever, Cisco is committed to responding to customer input and driving systemic improvements and discipline across all functions. .

At Cisco, we are very proud of our accomplishments, humbled that our customers allow us to be a critical and key part of their business, and recognize the value of our partnership with our ecosystem teams. We look forward to the future - most of all, we look forward helping our customers to leverage technology that increases their productivity.

Thank you for your partnership in changing the way we all work, live, play and learn.

Rich Goldberg
Vice President of Corporate Quality
Cisco Systems, Inc