Glossary
First-time fix rate
The share of repairs that pass final quality control on the first attempt, without rework or a second pass.
Where repair yield measures how many devices are saved, first-time fix rate measures how efficiently they were saved. A unit that passes final QC on the first attempt consumed one set of parts and one block of technician time; one that comes back for rework consumed two, and delayed everything queued behind it.
The metric is diagnostic. A low first-time fix rate rarely means technicians are careless. It usually points to a diagnosis that was incomplete at intake, an SOP that omits a verification step, or a spare part of uncertain quality. Each cause has a different fix, and the metric alone does not tell you which one applies.
It also protects margin after the sale. A repair that fails in the customer’s hands rather than in the workshop turns into a return, and under the EU Right to Repair Directive a repair carries a twelve-month guarantee extension from the date it was completed. Rework caught internally is cheap; rework discovered externally is not.