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The cost of NOT achieving good quality. Hence also called Cost of Poor Quality. Cost of Quality is all the costs in an organization resulting from not doing things right first time. Includes rework, correcting faulty data, waiting for missing information, dealing with customer returns and complaints. Can be analyzed as the cost consequences of internal and external failures, and the costs of prevention and appraisal. Cost of quality is generally not apparent or explicitly costed, and so constitutes the hidden factory. Poka Yoke is one way to reduce cost of quality by building defect prevention into processes.

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