An increase in which of the following costs of quality will result in a reduction...

The correct answer is A. Prevention . In the CSSBB quality-cost model, prevention costs are the costs of activities specifically designed to prevent poor quality in products or services. The source also explains that many companies initially spend too little on prevention and that increasing prevention can significantly reduce failure costs. In fact, the CSSBB material notes that some authorities contend that every dollar spent on prevention can save approximately seven dollars in failure costs .

The optimum quality-cost model further shows that as prevention and appraisal costs increase , failure costs decrease until an optimum total-cost point is reached. However, when asked which increase will result in a reduction of total quality costs , the best answer is prevention, because prevention attacks the root cause before defects occur. Appraisal mainly detects problems, while internal and external failure costs are already consequences of poor quality. Therefore, from a CSSBB perspective, the most effective cost category to increase in order to reduce total quality costs is prevention cost .