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, COPQ) is the cost of quality that occurs because of failures or, in other words, of failure of keeping produced market exchangeables defect-free.

Trivia

Definitions

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.

Term

Joseph Juran pioneered the study of COPQ and coined the term, cost of poor quality.

Structure

COPQ includes tangible and intangible internal (i.e. before the marketable reaches the customer) and external (i.e. after the marketable reaches the customer) expenses.