Cost of poor quality (COPQ)
Cost of poor quality (COPQ) is what a manufacturer spends because things weren't done right the first time: scrap, rework, engineering changes, warranty claims, investigations and the time spent fixing them.
Most companies measure only part of it, usually the defects caught before shipping. A lot of COPQ starts as data problems: the wrong revision on the floor, a BOM translated by hand, a spec that didn’t reach purchasing.
For one manufacturer we worked with, nonconformances sent back to engineering fell from about 400 a year to about 40, once manufacturing reviewed the data before it hit the shop floor.
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Last reviewed November 2026 by Element Consulting
