Cost of poor quality

Cost of poor quality (also known by its acronym, COPQ, as well as failure cost, costs of non-conformance, or costs of failure of conformance; hereinafter, the Costs) is money spent because of failures or, in other words, of failure of keeping produced marketables defect-free.

Definition

According to Juran's Quality Handbook by Defeo (7th edition),

Cost of poor quality (COPQ). The costs that would disappear in the organization if all failures were removed from a product, service, or process; typically measures of a percent of sales or total costs.

Structure

The Costs include tangible and intangible internal (i.e. before the marketable reaches the customer) and external (i.e. after the marketable reaches the customer) expenses.