Quality Management Costs in Logistics

The minimization and elimination of deviations from quality that could cause a failure in the logistics system should be identified at an early stage in order to reduce the costs for recovering the system to its normal operation. The objective of this study is to analyze the contribution of prevention costs related to quality management to the total costs by focusing on the need to undertake priority preventive actions to ensure logistics services that meet the customer's quality requirements. The methodology of the study includes the integrated application of conventional scientific methods for comparative analysis and Taguchi's design for accounting regarding the primary costs for quality management with the predominant use of qualitative analysis. By applying these methods, the following groups of costs have been analyzed: prevention and avoidance of nonconforming quality; quality evaluation and control; and covering the costs for nonconforming quality of the logistics services. The contribution of the three groups of costs has been studied. Based on the analyses, this paper comes to the conclusion that the management of those costs by groups of factors for incurring them has the potential to contribute to the improvement of the quality of logistics.