A. Of what value is a cost of quality system to an organization?

B. Why might there be some initial conflict between an organization's cost accounting and quality engineering departments in starting a cost of quality program?

C. Why might prevention costs be referred to as an investment while failure costs might be referred to as true costs?

D. Why does Deming refer to external failure costs as "unknown and unknowable"?

E. Contrast Deming's and Crosby's views about the ability to quantify external failure costs.

F. How do Taguchi's ideas about quality costs differ from the traditional view?

G. Why would you expect that incorporating a COQ system with a system of continuous quality improvement would result in a short-term increase in the overall cost of quality?

H. As an organization's cost of quality program matures, how would you expect the ratios among the four COQ categories to change?

I. How does activity-based costing facilitate the determination of quality costs?

J. Discuss how the tools of quality can be used in conjunction with a cost of quality system for continuous improvement.

K. How would you classify the cost of conducting inspection of manufactured products as part of the implementation phase of a statistical process control system? Should they be classified as prevention costs or appraisal costs? Present arguments for both classifications and then take a position and defend it.

L. Does a COQ system create improvement? Discuss.

M. What would you expect the short-term effects on total quality costs to be for a company that is in the initial stages of implementing a new system of continuous quality improvement?

O. How would you suggest estimating the cost associated with the loss of customer good will due to a product recall?