The development of measures of the cost of quality for an engineering unit

Abstract This COQ project was originated with the objective of investigating measures of the cost of quality in engineering departments. The goal was to identify existing measures of the cost of quality in engineering operations and to recommend measures for possible use for the engineering unit of the client organization. To this end, information was obtained from the literature and telephone interviews with quality practitioners from major US corporations. Identifies a number of engineering measures of the cost of quality. More important, however, was the discovery that specific measures used to ascertain COQ were only part of what was needed. Also very important are the processes used to identify these measures and the requirement that engineering units tailor‐make a COQ programme. Describes the findings from a few of the interviews conducted as part of this project.