Are you guilty of these mistakes? How a QMS can reduce the cost of poor quality

Bethan Foston Date published: Nov 01, 22

Providing the highest quality service is essential, as I am sure you are well aware. Not only in terms of satisfying your customer needs, but also to remain competitive in your industry.

What is COPQ?

The cost of poor quality is a methodology helping your organisation to determine the implications of providing inadequate products or services. ASQ discovered that it can be as high as 40% in some organisations.

Knowing your cost of quality is an important metric to determine if the implications of poor quality will outweigh your profit.

Here are just a few examples of implications of poor quality:

Common quality mistakes and fixes

Having a lack of supervision and operational transparency

Risks and unfortunate incidents may be missed which could lead to legal implications, monetary hits and, most importantly, a compromise to your employee safety.

Corrective and preventative action module

Implementing a Corrective and Preventative Actions (CA/PA) module ensures risks are identified before they become a reality; this makes it easier to keep on top of staff safety procedures, reporting and legislative requirements. What’s more, mobile reporting allows you to attach evidence proving full visibility within your audit trails.

When multiple risks identified, the wrong ones are addressed first

If that risk was to escalate to an unfortunate incident, not only would there be legal implications given that it had previously been identified, but this would impact both customer and staff satisfaction- and not for the better.

Audit module

With an audit management module, the high-risk issues are flagged making it simple to identify the most avoidable quality costs. Risk matrices allow you to rank the importance of each issue and set regular risk reviews: the higher the risk, the more reviews.

Unorganised management of suppliers and third-party vendors leads to quality failures

Having information across multiple systems is confusing and can be harder to deal with quickly in the event of a mishap. Staff may become unhappy when having to waste valuable time ‘firefighting’ issues rather than preventing them at the source.

 Supplier management module

Creating a risk profile of your entire supply chain with the supplier module allows critical information to be stored and tracked centrally. Consolidating quality data provides clearer direction and you to take preventative actions to avoid future mishaps with current and future vendors.

Avoidable mistakes are constantly being made meaning product specifications aren’t meet client requirements.

Customer dissatisfaction is a major implication of poor quality. Plus, producing incorrect products is a huge waste of both time and resources and, what’s worse, could lead to a mass recall. A decrease in productivity and wasting resources all equates to monetary loss.

Issues management module

Unlock complete visibility of your quality and risk environment. With the Issues module, you can investigate and analyse reoccurring issues, making sure they never happen again. What’s even better, the system automatically generates a customisable to-do list, so you’ll never miss an action again.

The use of uncalibrated equipment results in inaccurate reporting and product defaults are undetectable

Customers are left unhappy when the product is faulty and doesn’t adhere to the specification stated. Additionally, your own resources are wasted when products must be remade, returned, or worse, recalled.

 Asset and equipment module

Q-Pulse Asset and Equipment Management lets you be proactive and schedule maintenance notifications, so nothing slips under the radar. Breeze through your inspections with total visibility of corrective actions and maintenance logs for auditing purposes.

What are the benefits of using a QMS to improve quality?

• Fewer customer complaints will lead to improved brand reputation
• Materials aren’t wasted when things are done right the first time leading to a higher profit margin
• High product quality means potentially higher selling prices
• Greater production volumes as employees aren’t wasting time ‘firefighting’ issues
• Compliance is easy to demonstrate which reduces audit time
• Improved employee satisfaction rates due to efficient processes and a safer workspace

The Costs of Poor Quality can add up quickly, rapidly decreasing your profit and reputation. Watch our webinar, 'The cost of poor quality: How poor quality can impact your business' to find out the main causes of poor quality and how to avoid them.