Gestão da qualidade na indústria torrefadora de café na região Sudeste do Brasil: uma análise de custo

The coffee roasting segment is passing through deep transformation since the beginning of the 90´s, and the requirement of quality has been essential for the performance of those companies in the market. The quality factor has been playing important role for the competitiveness of the enterprises. Some authors believe that, under the aegis of the market globalization, the quality reaches its highest level of importance in the business decision process and turns out to be the passport for opening the most challenging markets and for upholding the niches in the more competitive markets. However, systems or quality programs generate costs that, usually, are unknown for the firms. In Brazil, the literature on the costs of the quality lacks more comprehensive studies. This paper aims to evaluate the costs of the quality in the coffee roasting industry in the Southeast of Brazil, in relation to some performance indicators, intended for those companies that adopt some quality program in its industrious process. The results point to that only some performance indicators get better in relation to the costs and that the companies don’t have a defined system of their cost measurements of the quality.