Estimating Quality Costs by Computer Simulation

Abstract

"Quality improvement continues to be a key priority in many modern-manufacturing companies. Yet it often takes place without a full evaluation of corresponding costs and benefits. A new case exercise addresses this situation with the aim of making quality managers much more aware of the consequences -particularly the detailed economic effects - of their actions. The focus of the exercise is a set of results from a realistic production line setup. These reveal related quality costs to be far from satisfactory. With the aid of a computer simulation model (QCOST), participants strive to optimise costs for the line against a targetted output quality. "