Abstract
A study has been made over a period of four years of the use of quality costing by three individual manufacturers of coatings for industrial and decorative use. The experience indicates that differences in manufacturing processes, products, markets and systems all combine to prevent one company's quality costing system from being used effectively by another. It was found that the establishment of a reliable and well-developed management information system is of considerable importance to the establishment of a quality costing system. It is also pointed out that the early reporting of some costs such as internal and external failure in advance of the development of a complete quality costing system was found to be beneficial in getting the concept of quality costing accepted and making good use of the data.