Cost Of (Bad) Quality

Why are brands preferable? Why do people prefer to buy branded material even though it may cost 1.5 times more than other items? The answer is trust. Trust of what? Trust of quality. Common people don't know much about quality. They only know that when it is of a big company or a big brand name, it is of good quality. It is better to pay more that product because there will be no headache in future. Even though the product offered is same. The unbranded product comes from the supplier to the brand, while the competing product is of the brand itself. Both the products are same, but the branded product is costlier and bears the brand name. The basic point is, that the branded product will give 'PEACE OF MIND' because of it's QUALITY. 

Commoners agree that though we are paying more price, this product life is longer than the other one. Ultimately, the lifetime costs are less. This means that the effective price of a quality product is less. Quality manufacturers are preferred because there is no headache in their supplies. So, where does bad quality or no quality consciousness take us. If there is no quality consciousness, then the rejection ratio will be high. There will be internal rejection. This rejection will come when your product quality inspection is good, but you lack process quality inspection / control. This will ultimately give a loss of the raw material and the process cost. The higher losses are in the next stage. What if your product quality inspection is also absent. When product quality inspection is not there, then and will have headache. No one likes headache. He will transfer that headache to you. You will be asked to replace that material. If this is repeated, it is quite possible that the customer will break. You will not get orders from him. 

This will have the most detrimental effect. When it is internal rejection, only your raw material and process cost is wasted. When it goes to customer and it has to be replaced, the replacement is the additional wastage. We are not adding any in-tangential losses here like time, loss of faith & goodwill, etc. If the customer gets dissatisfied and is disconnected, then it is the biggest loss. No customer is wholly dependent on you. It will be only for one time that he will be affected. Next time he will have cover and you will be the sufferer. The best way to avoid this is to have quality products & systems.