Key takeaways
Short answer: Scrap is defective product you throw away — an obvious, visible loss of material and all the processing in it. Rework is defective product you repair and recover — it looks like a save, but it consumes extra labour, capacity and time that rarely gets fully costed. Both hit the OEE Quality rate; rework just hides its cost better. See also rolled throughput vs overall yield.
Scrap is the honest loss. The part is discarded, taking with it the material and every minute of processing already invested, plus sometimes a disposal cost. It is painful but at least it is visible and easy to quantify.
Rework feels like a rescue — the part ships, so it seems free. But fixing it consumes extra labour and machine time, and that capacity could have made new product. Because the unit eventually passes, this cost is rarely fully booked, which is what makes rework the sneakier of the two.
A line produces 1,000 units; 30 are scrapped and 70 are reworked. The scrap cost is obvious and gets reported. The rework looks like a win — 70 units saved. But those 70 units consumed two hours of a technician's time and an hour of machine capacity that would otherwise have made 50 new sellable units. Counted honestly, the rework cost more than the scrap, yet only the scrap appeared on the quality report. Rolled-throughput yield exposes both.
A reworked part passes, so it feels free, but the time and capacity spent fixing it are gone for good. Tracking only scrap makes a plant feel its quality cost is small when most of it is hiding in rework hours that never get attributed to quality.
Both trace to the same root causes — process variation, tooling, material. Mistake-proofing and quality-at-source cut scrap and rework together. The goal is making it right the first time, which removes the rework hours and the scrap material in one move.
1. Tracking scrap but not rework. Most of the real quality cost stays invisible.
2. Celebrating rework as a save. It consumes capacity that could have made new product.
3. No first-pass yield metric. You cannot see how much quality you actually lost.
4. Fixing symptoms. Reworking without addressing the root cause means doing it again tomorrow.
Scrap and rework both reduce the Quality term of OEE. Tracking them with reason codes turns "we have a quality problem" into a targeted Pareto of exactly what to fix — and exposes the rework cost that scrap-only reporting hides.
Fabrico tracks scrap and rework with reason codes and feeds rolled-throughput yield, so the hidden rework cost finally shows up next to the scrap. Book a demo to see your true Quality loss.
Cheaper per part on the surface, but it hides real labour and capacity cost that often exceeds the scrap.
Yes — both reduce the Quality rate.
Track rework labour and capacity, and use rolled-throughput yield to expose first-pass quality.
Quality-at-source and mistake-proofing that fix the shared root causes.
Because the part eventually ships, so the time spent fixing it rarely gets booked as a quality cost.
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