Your cost of quality is already in your P&L. Just not labelled as such.
The Cost of Quality Assessment shows you which cost blocks your company sees, which it half sees and which it does not see at all. Two sessions, a 72-hour window in between. Without you tidying up first.
Three sentences you have said in one form or another
„I know our scrap rate."
You do not know your rework hours — they sit in production time, not in quality. Two cost blocks that belong together drift apart in two directions.
„We have halved our complaints."
Your P&L shows none of it. Either the improvement is smaller than you think, or the saving is booked somewhere nobody associates with quality. You should know which.
„We should invest more in prevention."
You are deciding on an investment without the figure you would compare it against: what not doing it costs. The investment has a number, the status quo does not.
The visibility map
What you end up with is a document you can pass on without me — to your advisory board, your shareholder, your bank. It assigns exactly one of three states to each cost block and justifies it with the evidence that supports it.
in view
The block is recorded, clearly attributable, and the record holds up to a follow-up question. You could name the figure in a meeting and supply the evidence afterwards.
partly in view
The block is recorded, but incompletely, irregularly, or somewhere nobody reads. The most dangerous state: there is a figure, and it looks solid.
blind spot
The block exists but is not recorded. Almost never out of negligence. Usually because nobody ever gave it a name — and what has no name does not get booked.
Opportunity costs are blind in every assessment. That is not a finding about your company, it is a finding about the category.
Lost orders, customers who walked away, management time tied up: there is no record for something that did not happen. Anyone selling you a figure here has estimated it and is calling it analysis.
Why the remote format gives you no euro total
A number is only as good as the system that produces it.
If three of five cost blocks are blind or half visible, any total I give you is an extrapolation from what was already visible anyway. You could not defend that figure in your next shareholder meeting, and I could not evidence it. So you do not get it.
What you get instead is the map that shows where a defensible figure can arise at all, and what is missing for it. If you need an order of magnitude, the on-site format provides one — as a range, with the derivation next to it, so that everyone in the room can see what it rests on.
A first order of magnitude on your own, with no sign-up and no conversation: the cost of quality calculator — 15 minutes, free. It gives you the question, not the answer.
Two sessions, one window in between
Kick-off — together, not one after the other
Management and the quality lead sit in the same session. I explain the procedure, you decide on the scope, and the exoneration clause is spoken out loud (see below). Separate sessions would damage the procedure before it starts.
The window
You upload what you consider relevant. You get no list, no categories and no mandatory fields. The window closes automatically.
Evaluation
Every cost block gets a state and an evidence trail: which document carries the classification, which contradicts it, which is missing. What did not arrive is evaluated too.
The visibility map
Five cost blocks, three states, reasoning and evidence trail for each. In your company's name. Passed on without me needing to be in the room.
Results session
Together again. We go through the map and you decide whether and where you want to make the blind blocks visible. There is no proposal slide at the end.
Why you get no document checklist
Most assessments start with a checklist. This one does not — and the reason is methodical, not convenient.
The moment I tell you which documents I expect, you stop telling me which ones you have. You would search, supply afterwards and, in case of doubt, reconstruct. I would be measuring the tidied-up state instead of the real one, and the map would be worthless — it would describe how well you can work through a list.
What arrives within the 72 hours is already half the finding. What does not arrive is the other half.
That is why the window closes automatically and there is no supplying afterwards. It is uncomfortable. That is exactly why the result holds up.
Your quality lead is not the problem. They are the condition.
The most common reason a cost of quality assessment never happens: the quality lead expects their department to be judged at the end. That expectation is justified — and it reliably produces a filtered assessment.
That is why every assessment begins with a sentence that you say in the kick-off, in front of everyone involved:
„What becomes visible here is not a finding about the quality department. Blind cost blocks arise where nobody ever gave them a name. That is a question of how we book things, not of anyone's diligence."
Without that sentence you get a polite assessment. With it, your quality lead becomes the person who shows you the blind blocks themselves — because they are the only one in the building who knows where they are.
Map, or map plus order of magnitude
Remote
- Kick-off with management and the quality lead
- 72-hour window with secure upload
- Visibility map: five cost blocks, three states, evidence trail for each
- Results session, 90 minutes
- No euro figures — deliberately
On site
- Everything in the remote format
- One day at the plant: conversations, walk-through, evidence sampling
- Additionally a cost range with the derivation disclosed
- Comparison between what is documented and what happens on the floor
Which format fits is something we decide in the intro call. If your cost blocks are mostly in view, I will tell you that — then you do not need this assessment.
What the assessment is not
- Not cost reduction. Visibility is the precondition for it, not the result. Anyone promising you savings in the first step does not know your figures yet.
- Not an audit. Nothing is checked against a standard, nothing is rated and nothing is certified.
- Not a software rollout. What you end up with is a document, not a system you have to maintain.
- Not benchmarking. Industry figures from studies say little about how you book things. Your map is built from your evidence, not from someone else's averages.
- Not an assessment of people. See the exoneration clause — it is not a courtesy, it is a condition of the procedure.
Why this assessment looks like this and not like any other
Three things have to come together for documents to become a defensible map. Most providers have one of them.
Experience
Two decades in supplier quality, mostly on the customer side of the supply relationship — where complaints land, 8D reports get judged and escalations get decided. I know what a report looks like that is well meant and still carries nothing.
Mechanism
The 72-hour window, the three states and the evidence trail are not a questionnaire but a procedure with a logic behind it. It can be repeated and it can be checked.
Tooling
A second profession in IT and data processing. That is why the cost of quality calculator, the toolbox and the secure upload exist — built, not bought.
What does another quarter without this figure cost you?
I cannot tell you. That is precisely the point.
What can be said: until then, every decision about inspection effort, changing suppliers, rework capacity or investment in prevention is made without a cost basis. Not necessarily wrong — but uncovered. And the blocks nobody names keep growing in the meantime, without anyone noticing.
Before you ask
We already have a cost of quality calculation. Is this still worth anything to us?
Then the assessment is over faster — and afterwards you know how defensible your existing calculation is. A number is only as good as the system that produces it. If all five blocks are in view, I will tell you so and you can save yourself the on-site format.
We would have to tidy up first.
No. The tidying up would be the distortion. The state of your records is part of the finding, not a precondition for it.
How much of my team's time does this take?
Kick-off 60–90 minutes, gathering the documents within the 72-hour window, results session 90 minutes. No workshop, no interview series, no data collection during operations.
What happens to our documents?
The upload is encrypted, storage is inside the EU and assigned exclusively to your assessment. Documents are deleted after the results session; the visibility map stays with you. An NDA up front on request.
And then what? Does the big project start?
There is no obligation to continue, and no proposal slide in the results session. The map tells you which blocks need to be made visible. Whether you do that internally, with another partner or with me is your decision.
Why should management and the quality lead sit in the session together?
Because the exoneration clause does not work otherwise. It has to come from you and be heard. In separate sessions I get two filtered accounts instead of one shared starting point.
Thirty minutes, free, no documents needed.
Afterwards you will know whether the assessment is worth it for your company. Even if the answer is no — then I will tell you in the call and not in the invoice.
Book an intro call
