In een interview in Industryweek (1994) legt kwaliteitsgoeroe Armand Feigenbaum uit wat hij bedoelt met de term 'verborgen fabriek' (hidden factory):

By cost of quality I mean two things: the cost of getting it right and the cost of failing to get it right.

(...)

Today, in major American companies, [cost of quality] can be 25% or more in sales, most of which is failure. In my experience, that is created by what I call the hidden organization or hidden factory: that part of your organization that exists to do bad work. -- not because you want to do bad work, but because the whole process is such that you are driven into it.

Now the problem with downsizing and restructuring is that you will cut off the good heads with the bad heads. You'll simply move costs from one part of the organization to another without ever getting at them. This is why restructuring without a change in your way of working in terms of quality is like a weight-reduction program. Without a change in your lifestyle, it doesn't stick.

Bron: Dr. Armand Feigenbaum on the Cost of Quality and the Hidden Factory, interview by Tim Stevens (1994)