Quality

Related Topics:
Quality_Time :: Quality_Street :: Quality_Engineering :: Quality_Control_and_Tracking :: Quality_Assurance :: Quality_of_Service :: Quality

Quality refers to the distinctive characteristics or properties of a person, object, process or other thing. Such characteristics may enhance a subject's distinctiveness, or may denote some degree of achievement or excellence. When used in relation to people, the term may also signify a personal character or trait. When used in relation to management, the term may be easily defined as "reduction of variability" or "compliance with specifications".

The term is sometimes contrasted with the concept of quantity. In science, the work of Aristotle focused on measuring quality, whereas the work of Galileo resulted in a shift towards the study of quantity.

Quality can be used as a tool of measurement, like metric or fahrenheit, as it is used to judge both subjects that are esteemed as credible and agreeable as "high quality" and subjects that are viewed as confusing, offensive, unhelpful, or incredible as "low quality." But quality is also used as a positive word, as in the sense of "this is a quality chair." Its antonym can be perceived as poorness, incredibility, unhelpfulness, and a variety of other words that reflect the concept of having low quality.

ISO 9000 defines quality as "degree to which a set of inherent characteristic fulfils requirements".

For Six Sigma quality is the value added by a productive endeavor. Quality comes in two flavors: potential quality and actual quality. Potential quality is the known maximum possible value added per unit of input. Actual quality is the current value added per unit of input. The difference between potential and actual quality is waste.

In organizations

Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality, including SPC, Zero Defects, Six Sigma, quality circles, TQM, Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001 and others) and continuous improvement.

Historical development of the concept

The meaning for the term quality has developed over time. Seven distinctive interpretations:

"Conformance to specifications" (Phil Crosby in the 1980s). The difficulty with this is that the specifications may not be what the customer wants; Crosby treats this as a separate problem.
"Fitness for use" (Joseph M. Juran). Fitness is defined by the customer.
A two-dimensional model of quality (Noriaki Kano and others). The quality has two dimensions: "must-be quality" and "attractive quality". The former is near to the "fitness for use" and the latter is what the customer would love, but has not yet thought about. Supporters characterise this model more succinctly as: "Products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations". One writer believes (without citation) that this is today the most used interpretation for the term quality.
"Value to some person" (Gerald M. Weinberg)
(W. Edwards Deming), "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. Better quality at lower price has a chance to capture a market. Cutting costs without improvement of quality is futile." "Quality and the Required Style of Management" 1988 See http://www.deming.org/
"The loss a product imposes on society after it is shipped" (Genichi Taguchi). Taguchi?s definition of quality is based on a more comprehensive view of the production system.
Energy quality, associated with both the energy engineering of industrial systems and the qualitative differences in the trophic levels of an ecosystem.

However, the American Society for Quality defines "quality" as "a subjective term for which each person has his or her own definition." Source: http://www.asq.org/glossary/q.html

In music

In music quality refers primarily to the timbre, but also dynamics and musical texture, of a section or piece.

In phonetics

In phonetics quality refers to the articulatory features that distinguish vowels and to their acoustic correspondent. Vowel quality is opposed to vowel quantity.

In philosophy

Robert M. Pirsig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, studies the philosophical aspects of Quality, and examines the distinctions and relationship between classical and romantic quality, seeking to reconcile the two views and understand how they stand in relationship to each other.

In this context the two aspects of classical and romantic quality roughly parallel aesthetic quality and functional quality. Alternatively, they parallel the notions of hip and square used by youth at the time to loosely describe the two sides in the 1960s social revolution at the time of writing.

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