I find the quality costs your P&L doesn't label — and help you cut them
Scrap has an account. Special freight, sorting shifts, firefighting hours and the order you didn't win do not. Finding and reducing them takes three things that rarely sit in one person: a decade on the customer side of supplier quality, the IT side of the systems that are supposed to record them, and seven years building the finance and controlling systems those costs hide in. That combination is what Zero Defect Pizza is built on.
Why should you trust what you read here?
Because none of it comes from a textbook. Every method on this site has been used in real production, with real suppliers, under real deadline pressure — from the customer side, where 8D reports get assessed rather than written. And because I did not arrive at quality costs through quality alone: I spent seven years implementing finance and controlling systems before that, which is why I talk about accounts rather than percentages.
The short version
- 10+ years in supplier quality management — customer side: assessing supplier 8Ds, escalations and audits
- 20+ years in IT, including 7 years implementing SAP finance and controlling across three continents
- Focus: cost of quality — making the failure costs visible that your P&L already pays, so you can cut them
- I know P&Ls from the inside, down to the chart of accounts — that is why I can point at accounts, not just at percentages
- Bridging QM, IT and AI — I test AI claims the way we test parts: incoming inspection first
- Fluent in the hard standards of automotive-grade quality — translated for every industry
- I build what I recommend: the calculator, the templates, the courses — all made by me
- Based in Germany · Content in English and German
Why is it called Zero Defect Pizza?
Because quality management has an image problem: it sounds like paperwork. Pizza does not. A pizza is a product everyone understands — ingredients, a recipe, a hungry customer who notices every defect immediately. Every method on this site is explained twice: once for the factory, once for the pizzeria.
If you can run a zero-defect pizzeria, you understand more about quality than most audit checklists will ever teach you.
| Pizzeria | Factory |
|---|---|
| Ingredients list | Your bill of materials |
| The recipe | Your process |
| Burnt crust | Internal failure cost |
| Angry review | External failure cost |
| Taste test | Appraisal cost |
| Better oven timer | Prevention cost |
What I believe about quality costs
The cost of poor quality is already in your P&L — just not labelled as such
Scrap has an account. Special freight, sorting shifts, firefighting hours and lost orders do not. My work starts where the labels end.
A number is only as good as the processes and systems that deliver it
Most quality cost figures are honest calculations on blind data. I care about what your processes and systems can see — before I care about what they say.
Quality costs exist in three states: seeing, partially seeing, blind
Most companies only ever see the first. Making the other two visible is the fastest way to change a management conversation — because you can only improve what you can see.
The process is still the boss
When a root cause ends at “operator trained”, nobody looked at the process. True on production lines — and just as true for AI rollouts.
AI is a supplier — its output gets incoming inspection
I build AI applications myself — which is why I know where they shine and where they guess. Their output gets treated like delivered parts: evidence chain first, then trust. No hype, no fear — inspection.
“Retrained” is not a corrective action
When a failure repeats, the fix is usually a training record. But nobody knows who really masters which method — and knowledge walks out with every retirement. Competence needs the same discipline as quality: defined, measured, verified.
Predictive quality starts earlier than the algorithm
Prediction is the promise of the decade — and control charts were always prediction; only the compute is new. What the sales decks skip are the prerequisites: clean process data, defined defect terms, reliable labels and cost visibility. My rule of thumb: you cannot predict what you cannot even book.
So before you buy prediction, answer two questions: what does a defect actually cost you — and can your systems even see it? That is exactly what the Cost of Quality calculator and the quality cost diagnostic establish: the foundation every predictive initiative silently assumes.
Four ways I make quality costs visible
Quality Cost Diagnostic
The paid analysis: where your failure costs arise, and where your systems are blind to them. Two sessions, one written result.
Book an intro call →The CoQ Calculator
Your own order of magnitude in 15 minutes — including the opportunity costs most calculators leave out. Free, no login.
Start the calculator →Methods & templates
Every method explained in writing, with Excel templates and filled examples — so a method takes an afternoon, not a project.
Browse the toolbox →Courses & competence
Who in your team actually masters 8D, FMEA or 5-Why? Most companies don't know — until the audit or the repeat failure. Self-paced courses on complete worked cases, plus a qualification matrix that shows the gaps.
See the courses →The honest part
Two things you will not get from me: promises to reduce your quality costs by X per cent — nobody can promise that honestly before seeing your data — and content written to impress other consultants. Everything here is built for practitioners who have a problem on a Tuesday afternoon and need something that works by Wednesday.
Questions people ask before getting in touch
Four things people usually want to know before they download a template, run the calculator or book a call. If yours is not here, just ask — I answer my own mail.
One person: me. I write the content, create the Excel templates and build software solutions such as the Cost of Quality calculator. No agency, no ghostwriters, no contentfarm — which is also why new material appears in bursts rather than daily.
Yes, and free for commercial use inside your company. One email unlocks all of them at once. I earn my money with the quality cost diagnostic and
the work that follows — the toolbox is how you find out whether I am worth
talking to.
Both, differently. Practitioners get the toolbox, the courses and the calculator — self-service, no sales call needed. Companies get the quality cost diagnostic: two sessions, one written result on where your quality costs arise and where you are blind.
Start where it hurts
You want the number first, you need a tool, or you would rather talk it through — there is a door for each.
🧮 Open the calculator 🧰 Browse the templates 📞 Book an intro call