In the course of carrying out this assignment, the manufacturing vice president decided that the appearance of the chrome-plated stove top was unsatisfactory. Until then, the bases for rejection or acceptance of this part by the quality control section of the Chrome Products Division were a corrosion test and an appearance test; appearance was largely subjective and, in the final analysis, dependent on the judgment of the quality control person. In order to make the test more objective, three tops were selected and set up as standards for the minimum acceptable quality. Because better than average units were selected, rejects increased to over 80 percent. Personnel from the Chrome Products Division and the manufacturing staff jointly studied the manufacturing process to find a way of making the stove tops conform to the new quality standards. They added copper plating and buffing operations at the beginning of the process and a hand-buffing operation at the end of the manufacturing cycle. The total cost of these added operations was 80 cents a unit. As soon as the new operations were put into effect in June 1987, the rejection rate for poor quality declined to less than 1 percent