Part 2
By Ron Ketterling – President

As you might remember from Part 8 of our series “Effective Ways to Reduce Manufacturing Costs”, reducing the cost of quality is an important step in reducing manufacturing costs. Often the return on investment (ROI) does not warrant the cost of quality; therefore, evaluating and reducing quality costs early in the design phase can give companies a unique advantage.

Reducing the cost of quality begins with designing products for the minimum quality costs. To determine the minimum quality costs for the product, you must calculate the total cost. Since cost of quality should be the first cost driver to be quantified by total cost, the minimum quality cost should be easy to determine. Ask yourself the following questions when determining the minimum quality cost:

• How low can the cost go without compromising the integrity of the product?
• Where can the design of my product be simplified?
• How does the cost of quality impact the total cost?

Minimizing quality costs to yield a greater ROI also requires understanding quality issues and capitalizing on lessons learned in the past. It requires thorough up-front work so production teams can optimize quality by design, as well as inter-department teamwork to address all potential issues before entering production.

Extensive planning and preparation are required when reducing quality costs, but the results are worth the effort. Simply reducing quality costs can increase sales by creating a higher-quality profit and greatly reduce overall manufacturing costs. Download our “How to Choose a Manufacturing System” guide to see what kind of system can help you better lower you’re the quality costs of your products before production even begins.