Quality costing: A study of manufacturing organizations. Part 2: Main survey

Abstract

This paper continues the reporting of a four-stage investigation into the use of quality costing in manufacturing industry. The focus here is a large-scale survey conducted using a stratified sample of 1000 manufacturing organizations in the North East of England. The aim of the study was to identify what was actually happening in industry with respect to the use of quality costing within quality management. This was in order to provide an alternative view to the many case study-based investigations that predominate in the literature. To this end a large representative sample of industry was compiled. The methodology used in the survey is described and the key results obtained are detailed, including the relationship between the sophistication of quality management and company characteristics and a model for the best practice of quality costing.