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A field failure costs far more than the part: the service visit typically dominates, and customer goodwill or contractual downtime credits can exceed both. Totalling all three shows why detecting a defect in the factory is one to two orders of magnitude cheaper than detecting it in the field.
Field failure cost
Cost per failure = parts + service visit + goodwill; total = failures x cost per failure
The rule of ten: a defect costs roughly ten times more at each stage it escapes — design, production, final test, customer. Field cost per defect is commonly 100-1000 times the factory scrap cost.
Yes, combined with an expected failure rate curve. Reserve = units under warranty x expected remaining failure probability x cost per failure.