Its not an easy thing to do. The problem with quality costs is that it is usually involves the avoidance of issues that cost money and not what people think of as "saving money". Since it does cost to implement QM, you are adding to the overhead costs for the system but not reducing costs in a hard manner elsewhere. What you are attempting to reduce is the cost of bad quality such as customer returns due to defects and defective product as well as risk of serious injury to someone. What I'm amazed at is that being in a cosmetics industry already you weren't using this from the start. So I know that you must have some other systems in place that are tracking product quality.
So what you need to demonsrtrate is the cost of the "other process' vs. the SAP process. Will QM in SAP replace a LIMS? Will it replace paper? Will it speed up approval? Will it reduce mistakes from illegible handwriting. Will it reduce the time to compile reports, make require governmental reports, etc... Who is supporting these other systems? Cause they are out there. Maybe they are excel sheets. Is this data taking up server space? Is there any IT support for any of these quality systems. What about yearly licenses. If you have SAP already, QM is already there, no purchase necessary. Extra seat licensce may be needed depenidng on how many people are added to the system. Seems stupid to have a software, (SAP),and not maximize its use where you can.
Find out how much material was returned in the past year and why. What were the shipping costs or disposal costs? How much aged material is taking up inventory space? Warehouse space costs money. Some one in finance knows how much material was destroyed or written off for various reasons. Find that out. Even reducing that by 1% can be a significant amount of money.
Have you ever had a bad raw material find its way into production? Why? What happend? How much did it cost the company? Are the vendors audited? How? Who tracks it? Is it automated? Are there standard procedures?
Also, try to get a look at what other projects are trying to get approved and who you are competing against. For instance, if someone is trying to purchase a vendor tracking and compliance software and running into difficulty, they might be willling to utilize SAP for that and be willing to throw their weight (and cost analysis), behind your project. See if there are any LIMS upgrades in the near future. For the cost of a LIMS upgrade you might be able to bring in QM depending on the LIMS and the age of it.
Don't forget governmental compliance and regs. When was the last time you got fined by someone? (ask someone in legal). Its public record. Search the internet. What was reason? The cost?
Any failed audits for ISO? Would QM help with reducing costs there?
I hope this gives you some ideas.
FF
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