Are you throwing away a significant portion of your budget without realizing it? How often do engineers, scientists, and analysts regenerate knowledge work—solving problems or similar problems that have already been solved?

This article shows how to make leadership aware of all costs and not just the tangible ones. It helps quality professionals to quantify the Total Cost of Quality and derive a compelling business case from that quantification.

Quality is a critical competitive priority for organizations. It is the foundation for a competitive advantage, even when firms prioritize other operational considerations. However, it is often de-prioritized during financial stress, leading to financial, customer, and workforce issues.

According to MasterControl’s 2022 Digital Quality Maturity Study conducted by Cicero research, the majority of quality organizations are going digital, have plans to go digital within the next five years, or believe this is where they need to go to achieve compliance and remain competitive.

Calculating the true cost of quality becomes faster and simpler with an ERP system that does it for you. This requires a system that includes four essential capabilities.

If you’re one of those companies still considering taking the first—or possibly next—step in their automation journey, start with the following steps to facilitate the process, and feel more comfortable doing it.

Existing models and quality characteristics used for software, systems, and data quality can be leveraged to identify cost categories and support the creation of a Cost of Quality System for Quality 4.0.

As a full time auditor for the past six years for one of the large management system registrars, I start every interview, from production personnel to the CEO, with the question: “Given all of your job responsibilities at this company, what does the word ‘quality’ mean in your work?” 

At the end of the day, nothing matters more than customer satisfaction. Fundamentally, this sounds quite simple; make the customer happy, and all is well. Keeping customers happy and loyal to your brand, however, is not as easy as it sounds. 

Readers of this column are a gentle lot and not likely to run afoul of criminal law but can end up in a similarly frustrating situation that limits their working life.