quality fade
quality fade noun: a gradual, deliberate reduction in the quality of manufactured goods in order to increase profit margins.
Noun
quality fade (uncountable)
- A gradual, deliberate reduction in the quality of manufactured goods in order to increase profit margins.
- Chinese factories often engaged in this sort of quality fade—the incremental degradation of a product over time. They quietly reduced the amount of materials or else manipulated the quality of raw inputs.2009, Paul Middler, Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics behind China’s Production Game, page 96
- In this paper, quality fade, an element of supply chain vulnerability, is defined as the unforeseen deterioration of agreed to or expected quality levels with respect to product and/or service requirements. The use of outcome‐based, behavior‐based, or mix contracts can be used to reduce the...2010 August 16, Judith M. Whipple, Joseph Roh, “Agency theory and quality fade in buyer‐supplier relationships”, in The International Journal of Logistics Management, volume 21, number 3
- Synonyms:
- skimpflation
Examples of quality fade in a sentence
- The use of outcome‐based, behavior‐based, or mix contracts can be used to reduce the likelihood of quality fade and illustrate preferred scenarios for buyer and suppliers.2010 August 16, Judith M. Whipple, Joseph Roh, “Agency theory and quality fade in buyer‐supplier relationships”, in The International...
- The lack of a defined standard is concerning for quality fade—the phenomenon whereby manufacturers deliberately but surreptitiously reduce material quality to widen profit margins.2021 November 1, Rotem Naftalovich, Marko Oydanich, Tolga Berkman, Andrew John Iskander, “Quality Fade in Medical Device Manufacturing...
Synonyms of quality fade
Origin of quality fade
Coined by Paul Midler, author of Poorly Made in China (2009).
Questions about quality fade
- What does quality fade mean?
- Quality fade means a gradual, deliberate reduction in the quality of manufactured goods in order to increase profit margins.
- How do you use quality fade in a sentence?
- The use of outcome‐based, behavior‐based, or mix contracts can be used to reduce the likelihood of quality fade and illustrate preferred scenarios for buyer and suppliers.
- What part of speech is quality fade?
- Quality fade is a noun.
Words near quality fade in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: quality fade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “quality fade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quality_fade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.