THE 'COST OF QUALITY' IN THE WIRE CABLE INDUSTRY AN EXPLORATORY STUDY INTO THE IMPACT OF KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL ON QUALITY AND FINANCIAL COSTS

摘要

Knowledge and the management of knowledge has been of growing importance in the industrialized world. It has been said that knowledge may be the most important resource that an organization possesses. The wealth of knowledge that an organization may contain has even been named "intellectual capital" as if it had monetary properties. While these substantial claims have been made, there exists no well-established way to measure what that intellectual capital may be. No real metrics have been made for the intangible idea of "knowledge." This paper examines an exploratory study into how the knowledge that a company has can affect the efficiency and quality of its product. The "cost of quality" could be a measure of the value of the knowledge of a company. This study has been done in the Wire & Cable Industry. A critique of future expanded surveys of an industry is made, with focus on creating useable metrics to value knowledge pertinent to the operations of the organization within the industry.