Cost of Quality Training

Is a COQ Program essential? No, but it is important. Why? Let’s look at two well-known quotes:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” | Peter Drucker

“In God we trust, all others must bring data.” | W. Edwards Deming.
Drucker means that we cannot know if we are successful unless we have defined what success “looks like” and then measure and monitor our performance against our definition. Deming adds an important dimension: We need data, not hunches or opinions to properly understand how we are doing. Unless we can develop a reliable means to collect and quantify performance, we don’t really know how we are doing. Without data, we are just guessing.

So what can a COQ Program do for us? A COQ Program can:

• Let us know (approximately) how much it costs (as a % of sales) to prevent quality defects, detect them if they occur and recover from substandard quality issues
  when they do take place.
• Help us identify the processes, products or services that have the greatest impact on COQ.
• Effectively track and monitor COQ % over time so we can see if our efforts to reduce COQ are working.

Cost of Quality provides an excellent means to measure and track costs associated with poor quality, quality improvement and quality control.  But, it requires commitment from a wide range of functions throughout an organization.  These groups need to have a common understanding of COQ and need to work together to establish meaningful measures.  Cost of Quality online training assures the team responsible for Cost of Quality is all on the same page.  Upon completing the training, team members will be able to work together to identify sources of COQ data, agree on standards for approximation values and develop a plan for regular COQ reporting.  Participants will also be able to use the data to identify and prioritize improvement projects.