Quality & Metrology calculator
Quality Escape Cost Calculator
Total the known cost of a quality escape at the customer. Enter confirmed affected units, measured remediation cost and separate containment, freight and customer charges.
What this calculator does
- Add documented customer escape charges without estimating reputational damage or assuming lost future orders.
Formula used
- Unit remediation cost = escaped units × repair or replacement cost per unit
- Incident charges = containment and sorting + freight + other customer charges
- Total escape cost = unit remediation cost + incident charges
- Cost per escaped unit = total escape cost ÷ escaped units
Inputs explained
- Escaped Defective Units: Confirmed defective units delivered in this incident.
- Repair or Replacement per Unit: Recorded mean repair or replacement cost, excluding separate incident charges.
- Containment and Sorting Cost: Incident containment and sorting charges outside unit remediation.
- Customer Freight Cost: Additional returns and replacement freight charged to this incident.
- Other Customer Charges: Recorded incident charges excluded from remediation, containment and freight.
How to use the result
- Best suited to customer escape review, containment cost reconciliation.
- Unresolved claims, lost sales and reputational effects are excluded. The unit average can conceal unusually expensive individual failures.
Current U.S. benchmarks
- U.S. manufacturing runs at 75.7% of capacity (Federal Reserve, Aug 2026). New factory orders are up 8.5% year over year (Census).
Common questions
- Do I enter every shipped unit? Enter confirmed defective units associated with this escape. Shipped or sorted units are different populations.
- Does sorting belong in the unit remediation amount? It can, but then exclude it from the separate containment entry. Each expense must appear once.
- Can I add an assumed lost-customer multiplier? No. This total uses documented incident charges and does not infer future customer behavior.
- Why is cost per escaped unit blank at zero? No confirmed unit exists to carry the allocation. Enter the confirmed affected count to complete the incident assessment.
Last reviewed 2026-10-06.