ABSTRACT
The collection of information for quality and process control purposes is at best a value-assisting activity. Its cost-of-quality category would therefore be Appraisal or Prevention.
Consider, for example, a job in which the torque with which a fastener is tightened is a critical-to-quality characteristic. Most quality auditors would be more than satisfied, and rightly so under straight quality management system (QMS) standards, if the torque gage were calibrated properly and the measurements recorded accurately. Application of the torque gage is, however, almost a repetition of the original job of tightening the fastener, and it is not particularly efficient to do the same job twice.
