The Purchase Orders for Glenn Manufacturing Company were being copied by an employee and sent to four different departments yet only one department took an action based on the information in the PO. This is an example of ____________.

The described activity—copying and distributing purchase orders to departments that do not use them—is a form of process waste, specifically overprocessing. In the Cost of Quality (COQ) framework, costs resulting from waste, inefficiencies, and defects discovered before a product or service reaches the external customer are classified as Internal Failure Costs. The employee's time, paper, and distribution efforts for the unnecessary copies represent a non-value-added activity. This is a cost incurred because the process itself is flawed or defective, making it a classic example of an internal failure.

A. External Failure Costs: These costs arise from defects found after delivery to the customer (e.g., warranty claims, returns). The issue described is entirely internal to the company.
B. Appraisal Costs: These are costs associated with measuring, evaluating, or auditing products or services to ensure conformance to standards (e.g., inspection, testing). This scenario describes a wasteful process step, not an evaluation activity.
D. Prevention Costs: These are proactive costs incurred to prevent defects from occurring in the first place (e.g., quality planning, training). The activity described is a reactive cost resulting from an existing process flaw.

1. Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (7th ed.). Pearson. In Chapter 13, "Quality Costing: A Closer Look," internal failure costs are defined as "costs associated with detecting nonconforming products or services before they are delivered to customers." Wasteful and non-value-added activities are a form of nonconformance in a process.

2. Juran, J. M., & De Feo, J. A. (2010). Juran's quality handbook: The complete guide to performance excellence (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Chapter 8, "Quality Costs: Financial Measures for Performance Improvement," categorizes costs from all wasted effort, such as redundant operations, as internal failure costs (Section 8.6).

3. Mitra, A. (2016). Fundamentals of quality control and improvement (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. Chapter 2, "Quality Costs and Their Measurement," defines internal failure costs as those resulting from products or services not conforming to requirements before delivery. A process with redundant, unnecessary steps does not conform to the requirement of being efficient, and the associated costs are internal failures.