An automated method of predicting the number of defects that will occur during the manufacturing of a new electronic assembly design on a specific assembly line. Defective components are counted (214) as they are manufactured on an assembly line (210). The counted defects are stored in a historical database (220) and the defect rate is calculated. A bill of material for the new electronic design (230) is enumerated and information associated with each component is extracted from a library database (240) into a quality forecasting engine (250). The quality forecasting engine imports the enumerated bill of material and imports the stored defect rate from the historical database to perform a calculation of a predicted number of defects (260) for said new electronic assembly using the extracted library information.