Cost of Quality Methodology Explained
How does quality impact your manufacturing costs? In the past, many businesses thought of this as a strictly linear equation: it costs more to produce higher quality goods. The more sophisticated “cost of quality” methodology, however, shows that this massively oversimplifies the issue. In fact, quality is intertwined with costs in complex and sometimes surprising ways. In this article, we’ll explain how the methodology works, the factors it considers, and how digital manufacturing affects and improves the cost of quality. The relationship between cost and quality The relationship between cost and quality isn’t so much a correlation as a delta. It’s not as straightforward as saying “in order to improve quality, we need to spend more”. Rather, if you imagine different measurements of quality and cost as multiple bell-curves, there is a substantial cross-section in which you can bring down manufacturing costs and minimize waste while still achieving a high standard of product and good le...