Effects of Engineering Error on Quality Costs

Quality cost reporting is increasingly being accepted by American industry as one management tool needed to sharpen its competitive edge with world class competitors in domestic and world markets. Quality costs relate expenditures for avoiding “Unquality” to the cost of quality failures.

This paper's focus is to aquaint engineers with quality cost concepts and the effect of engineering decision fault's on the firm's quality cost structure and subsequent impact on profitability. A broad spectrum of engineering activities: product, project, process, industrial, etc, must be included in quality costs studies. This paper will examine two engineering areas impacting quality costs.