A note on: the economic effects of quality improvements

‘If we have quality problems and therefore a defect rate greater than zero, the total costs of production actually decrease.’ Furthermore, ‘although at first this might sound surprising, the decreasing total costs of production for poorer quality levels are to be expected.’ This was concluded in a paper published in this journal. In this note it is argued that this conclusion is misleading in suggesting that poor quality might be of economical advantage. The contrary is demonstrated – production costs actually grow dramatically due to poor quality.