Steel GRIPS

Cost of quality (COQ) is the cost of providing quality products or service to customers. The objective of a COQ process is to capture and eliminate the total value of poor quality. Opportunity costs, one of the items of COQ, are hidden and hard to measure failure costs, which can be only estimated such as profits not earned. This short communication discusses the outcome of some case studies carried out in certain steel plants to emphasize the strategic and economic importance of a COQ approach.

Stainless steel prices have recorded large declines over the last twelve months. However, the bottom of the price cycle was reached early in the second quarter of this year. Between August 2008 and this point, transaction values …