Quality

What is Quality

Quality of a product or service is the extent to which it incorporates features and characteristics that allow the customer to use it - at satisfying their needs. Quality can also be defined as being fit for the intended purpose, or "fit for purpose". Another simple definition for quality is "conformance to requirements".

Notable Definitions of Quality

The definition of "quality" has changed over time, and even today some variance is found in how it is described. However, some commonality can still be found. The common element of the business definitions is that the quality of a product or service refers to the perception of the degree to which the product or service meets the customer's expectations. Quality has no specific meaning unless related to a specific function and/or object. The business meanings of quality have developed over time. Various interpretations are given below:

• American Society for Quality: "A combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives for which each person has his or her own definition; examples of which include, "Meeting the requirements and expectations in service or product that were committed to" and "Pursuit of optimal solutions contributing to confirmed successes, fulfilling accountabilities". In technical usage, quality can have two meanings:
  • a. The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs;
  • b. A product or service free of deficiencies."
• Subir Chowdhury: "Quality combines people power and process power."
• Philip B. Crosby: "Conformance to requirements." The requirements may not fully represent customer expectations; Crosby treats this as a separate problem.
• W. Edwards Deming: concentrating on "the efficient production of the quality that the market expects, "and he linked quality and management: "Costs go down and productivity goes up as improvement of quality is accomplished by better management of design, engineering, testing and by improvement of processes.
• Peter Drucker: "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for."
• ISO 9000: "Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements." The standard defines requirement as need or expectation.
• Joseph M. Juran: "Fitness for use." Fitness is defined by the customer.
• Noriaki Kano and others, present a two-dimensional model of quality: "must-be quality" and "attractive quality." The former is near to "fitness for use" and the latter is what the customer would love, but has not yet thought about. Supporters characterize this model more succinctly as: "Products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations."
• Robert Pirsig: "The result of care."
• Six Sigma: "Number of defects per million opportunities."
• Genichi Taguchi, with two definitions:
  • a. "Uniformity around a target value." The idea is to lower the standard deviation in outcomes, and to keep the range of outcomes to a certain number of standard deviations, with rare exceptions.
  • b. "The loss a product imposes on society after it is shipped." This definition of quality is based on a more comprehensive view of the production system.

Gerald M. Weinberg: "Value to some person".