The Role of the Quality Assurance Professional in Determining Quality Costs

Applying quality cost techniques within an organization can be very difficult, and problems may arise at any stage from planning the programme through to corrective action. Seeks to illustrate the difficulties experienced with quality costs by two quality assurance managers working in very different total quality management (TQM) environments: Company A manufactures and assembles computers and is working at the forefront of advanced technologies, while Company B produces products used in the steel industry and is more representative of “traditional” industries. This part of the study was carried out between May and July 1993 and resulted in interviews with the quality managers to determine key problem areas. Broadly speaking, the difficulties identified can be categorized as: management, the quality assurance/accountancy interface, communications, internal systems, and people.