Order winners are "those competitive characteristics that cause a firm 's customers to choose that firm 's goods and services over those of its competitors. Order winners can be considered to be competitive advantages for the firm. Order winners usually focus on one rarely more than two) of the following strategic initiatives: price/cost, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, product design, flexibility, after-market service, and image." (APICS Dictionary 2008).
Order qualifiers are "those competitive characteristics that a firm must exhibit to be a viable competitor in the marketplace." (APICS Dictionary 2008)
Performance dimensions on which customers expect a minimum level of performance. Superior performance on an order qualifier will not, by itself, give a company a competitive advantage.
Order Qualifiers are the characteristics of products or services that is required in order for the product or service to be considered by a customer.
Order Winners are the characteristics that will win the bid or the customers purchase.
For example, a firm producing a high quality product (where high quality is the order-winning criteria). If the cost of producing at such a high level of quality forces the cost of the product to exceed a certain price level (which is an order-qualifying criteria), the end result may be lost sales, thereby making "quality" an order-losing attribute.
The terms "order winners" and "order qualifiers" were coined by Terry Hill, professor at the London Business School, and refer to the process of how internal operational capabilities are converted to criteria that may lead to competitive advantage and market success. In his writings, Hill emphasized the interactions and cooperation between operations and marketing. The operations people are responsible for providing the order-winning and order-qualifying criteria—identified by marketing—that enable products to win orders in the