This ability to reduce total quality costs dramatically in all categories is borne out by real-world experiences.Temnant, for example, over an eight-year period reduced its costs of quality from 17 percent of sales to 2.5 percent of sales and, at the same time, significantly altered the relative distribution of the quality cost categories. At the very beginning failure costs accounted for 50 percent of the total costs of quality (8.5 percent of sales) and control costs of 50 percent (8.5 percent of sales)