Biology Forums - Study Force

1. How do you measure quality in a product? Can you use the same measurement for every product and service? Provide an example.
2. Explain how improving quality can lead to reduced costs.

The quality of a product is measured using metrics, such as mean time between failures, number of defects found after the product is delivered to the customer, by the customer satisfaction

The measure that's used depends on the product being sold. For example, if we're selling non-perishable items, like a car, you'd check for defects in the pain, hardware, and interior. If you're selling perishable items, like groceries, you'd check for shelf-life, consistency in flavor, and/or packaging defects.


The cost of quality is very high in that firms must find best ways to avoid these costs. The realization of high quality ensures that the cost associated with quality is eliminated. Some these costs include prevention costs, appraisal costs and customer returns.

Prevention costs: these are those costs that are associated with inspection of the product. In this case, the firm will seek to ensure that none of the products are below standards. However, high quality products will eliminate these costs.

Appraisal costs: these are those costs that are linked with inspection of the goods and appraising the suppliers. When the products are of high quality, a firm will not need allocate resources in inspecting products. Instead, they will just be passed to the next level.

Customer returns: when a customer returns some of the products, it means that the firm will incur losses. This is the reason why it quality will eliminate losses made and costs as a results of reworking on the product.

Finally, quality also attracts customers to the firm. This means that the firm will not spend so much in marketing. Instead, the marketing costs and overall costs will go down.