Week 6 Lab: Cost of Quality, by Catch Point

An analytical lab — calculate cost-of-quality at different inspection points using real multiplier data, and justify an inspection budget

29 March 2027

Pairs. You’re given a fictional production run with a known defect injection rate and a choice of how much to spend on inspection at each of three stages (design, implementation, testing). Using the peer-reviewed multiplier week 6’s lecture surfaces — roughly 100x more expensive to fix post-release than at design, dropping closer to 5:1 on small non-critical work — calculate total expected cost under a low-inspection and a high-inspection budget, and recommend one.

Before the lab#

Read week 6’s lecture carefully — it spends real effort distinguishing a number that replicates from one that doesn’t, and this lab is graded on using the right one.

In the lab#

Work the numbers as a pair, then write a short justification: which inspection budget you’d actually recommend, and why the multiplier alone doesn’t answer that question (inspection has its own cost, so more isn’t automatically better — the lecture’s whole complication was that skipping it doesn’t remove cost, it relocates it, not that inspection is free).

Submitting#

The worked calculation for both budgets and the recommendation, from the pair. Due Wednesday 31 March, 5pm — earlier than this course’s usual Friday lab deadline, deliberately, so it doesn’t collide with Assignment 1’s Friday due date the same week.

Pairs of two.