Today, 12 November 2026, is World Quality Day. The Chartered Quality Institute runs World Quality Week from 9 to 13 November under the theme „Quality: powering performance.“ It is a good theme — and an uncomfortable question for many organisations: can you show, in money, what quality powers in yours?
The gap
According to ASQ, the ASQE 2025 Insights on Excellence report found that only 31% of respondents feel they fully understand the impact of quality costs on their organisation’s financial performance. When fewer than one in three fully understand it, quality easily looks like overhead in a budget discussion.
The framework already exists
ASQ describes four categories of quality cost:
- Prevention costs — incurred to prevent or avoid quality problems.
- Appraisal costs — measuring and monitoring activities.
- Internal failure costs — defects found before the customer receives the product.
- External failure costs — defects found after the customer receives it.
A pragmatic start
From my own experience in quality management: most organisations already have the data. Scrap is booked. Rework hours are on job cards. Complaint costs sit in a separate account. What is missing is someone who puts the four categories on one page.
Start with external failure. One customer complaint — investigation hours, travel, replacement parts, credit note — usually makes the point faster than any presentation.
Three actions for this week
1. Pull scrap and rework totals for the last twelve months.
2. Cost one recent customer complaint end to end.
3. Show both numbers next to your prevention budget at the next management review.
Sources
- CQI — World Quality Week 2026, quality.org
- National Today — World Quality Day (12 November 2026), nationaltoday.com
- ASQ — Cost of Quality (COQ), incl. ASQE Insights 2025, asq.org