Quality costs in multi-stage manufacturing systems

This paper illustrates a method of measuring quality costs in a multi-stage manufacturing systems. A review of existing literatures related to quality costs and economic design of quality inspection methods are discussed. Mathematical models that quantify the production cycle time and quality costs are formulated. The main contribution of this work is a more realistic consideration of the four types of quality costs (prevention cost, appraisal cost, internal failure cost, external failure cost) in manufacturing systems.