Cost of Quality Management: Encouraging Business Leaders to Manage and Invest in Quality Enhancement

Abstract

The quality management is a complex set of constant activities aimed at improving the quality of products and services, regularly evaluating and monitoring it, preventing defects, limiting and reducing malfunctions, and correcting production defects before and after the sale of goods. Ineffective quality management leads to such problems as product returns, claims, replacement or repair, loss of customer base, damage to brand reputation, etc. This paper aims to analyze advanced strategies, methodologies, methods and tools for effective control of quality management costs, ways and means of their strategic integration into the practice of business quality management, emphasize the importance of optimizing the cost of quality management in enterprises. The proposals developed in this article are demonstrated on the example of the woodwork division of MEKKERA (MDM), a subsidiary of the HASNAOUI Group in Algeria. An approach represented in the article combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative data collection involved semi-structured interviews with four company managers, processed using NVIVO software. The purpose of these interviews was to understand the reasons that led the company to include the evaluation of the Cost of Quality in its quality objectives for 2023, as well as the perspectives and goals aimed for by the company in this initiative. A Quantitative analysis relied on secondary data from the company’s database: direct quality costs were calculated using the P-A-F and Ferrebœuf models, prevention and detection measures’ effectiveness and production process performance were evaluated; key performance indicators for indirect quality acquisition costs were defined. Findings revealed the company exceeded set thresholds for internal and external failure costs, necessitating improvements. Ishikawa method identified causes, and corrective actions were proposed using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA).

Keywords

• categories of cost of quality
• cost of quality
• cost of quality management system
• cost of quality models
• improvement actions