all manufacturers regardless of size or product are engaged in the relentless pursuit of quality but many never stop and ask what is quality what does quality cost and who pays for it successful companies have discovered that quality applies to much more than the product being produced quality is now seen as encompassing every aspect of a company's operation from its dealings with suppliers to the design and timely manufacture of its products to customer relations far from the mere absence of defects quality is now being defined as continuously meeting or exceeding customer needs simply it's providing total customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis although there are a multitude of costs in manufacturing for quality they can be generally classified as direct or indirect costs direct costs include prevention appraisal internal failure and external failure costs prevention costs or all the resources spent to prevent errors from being made within the company it includes activities like quality audits equipment capability analysis defect prevention actions process characterization flowchart review operator certification and supplier qualification to name just a few appraisal costs or all the resources spent to determine if an activity was done right the first time you might be looking at costs that relate to inspection and tests you've got a whole process typically in place in the organization to make sure you spot the defects before they get to the customer which is a very good thing to do but there's a cost associated with that it'd be much better if the products were so good to begin with you didn't have to have as much or any inspection if you're talking about the cost of poor qualities there's some that just leap right off the page and they're very familiar with any manufacturing company or any company for that matter those are mostly those internal failure costs those are the ones were pretty much familiar with