Innovation and the cost of quality: Analysis and implications of current research Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © 2016 American Society for Engineering Management.Prajogo and Sohal (2001) aimed to find a relationship between total quality management (TQM) and innovation. Their extensive analysis of the state of the research led to the conclusion that the relationship between innovation and cost of quality (COQ) requires to be investigated since it was not considered in previous studies. COQ being an important part of quality planning area, according to Rose (2014), the previous statement thus needs to be investigated. The current work attempts to update and elucidate the veracity of Prajogo and Sohal's (2001) conclusions regarding the lack of consideration of innovation as an important part of the COQ theoretical framework. To do so, an analysis of the current state of research in this area was conducted based on the State-of-the-Art-Matrix (SAM) approach. SAM methodology defines search query, gathering procedures, quality assessment and analysis procedures to obtain and analyze a sample of research publications in the open literature. No clear relationship between innovation and COQ, also known as cost of poor quality (COPQ) and quality cost, was found; this confirms Prajogo and Sohal's (2001) conclusions several years after their research. In addition, other analyses were performed using the sample of research articles to obtain working knowledge in the area of COQ. In summary, this work brings to light the very real voids that are currently present in COQ research such as the existence of a possible relationship between innovation and COQ.

publication date

  • January 1, 2016