THE TOTAL, COST OF QUALITY*

When Ed Johnson, your vice chairman, called and asked me to speak on the philosophical aspects of quality control as opposed to a more detailed technical presentation of the elements of a quality control system, my first thought was, \"Why not get a quality control manager to give the talk?\". Thinking it over though, I had to agree that an unbiased talk by one responsible to get vendor deliveries of nuclear cores on time, at the lowest possible price, while still demanding top specification quality might not be such a bad idea. Why should we be interested in the \"Total Cost of Quality\"? As managers, technical consultants, or administrators, all of us will agree that to design, process and sell products competitively in today's market place, American businessmen must take full account of this crucial trend: customers, be they industrial, consumer or military — have been increasing their quality requirements very sharply in the past fifteen years. This tendency is being greatly amplified by the intense competition that overcapacity always brings. Since management is concerned with the total working of a business enterprise and in the end must earn a profit to stay in competition, we must take time to understand how a poor quality product can cost us \"our shirts. \" Some weary managers will tell us that they have been forced by the military to recognize the need for a separate quality control organization and that the resultant added overhead expense is choking \"them to death.\" Let's look at how we got where we are today.