A Historical Analysis of the Evolution of the Economics of Quality: The Cost of Quality Revisited

Abstract

The current work aims to shed light on the evolution of the economics of quality, also known as the cost of quality (COQ), via a historical analysis of the succession of different historical and scientific developments in the field. A timeline analysis makes visible the critical shifts in the development of the COQ theory and its implications to current industrial and technological challenges. In the same vein, the analysis of technical developments gives grounds to question the prevailing COQ paradigm, i.e., besides obtaining the COQ's evolution profile, the analysis shows the current COQ paradigm lacks lean manufacturing elements such as pull demand strategies. The current theory may unintentionally omit relevant information regarding the interaction between supply (supplier) and demand (customer), which in turn reduces current COQ model's predictability. This problem is identified as a possible paradigm paralysis in the future development of the state of the art in COQ.