From the course: Process Improvement Foundations

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Understanding the real cost of quality

Understanding the real cost of quality

From the course: Process Improvement Foundations

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Understanding the real cost of quality

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- Does it cost more to make a better product, or to provide a better service? At first sight, you would think yes, wouldn't you? Well, there are two parts to the cost of quality, the first one being what's known as prevention cost. And this does increase as you increase your quality. This is the cost of making sure things are done well, so it includes things like training, having quality control systems and good management, having great equipment and materials, and employing good people. It gets very expensive to make everything perfectly. In fact, it increases exponentially, becoming infinite when you approach perfection. The other cost of quality is the failure cost. Now, this increases as your quality decreases. As you become more and more rubbish, you have to pay more to scrap things, rework things, handle complaints from customers, lose contracts, maybe even get sued. You can see that using cheap materials, cheap…

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