Quality

From ArticleWorld

Quality is a term used to refer to certain characteristics in a person, object or process that has some degree of excellence. In people Quality is an indication of character. In management it means compliance with certain standards or set of specifications.

Quality is a tool to assess, the credibility of a specific subject or a product. It decides the whether credible or non-credible based on its high quality or low quality. As per ISO 9000 norms, ‘Quality is degree to which a set of required specifications are fulfilled or not’. There are different methods available and used to either improve or maintain the product or service the quality. Six sigma, ISO 9001 are a few examples to quote in this context.

Historical development

The word quality has been interpreted in seven different methods and ways. These are:

• ‘Conformance to specifications’ (Phil Crosby) Here quality specifications is defined by the producer and not the customer.
• In case of "Fitness for use" (Joseph M. Juran), the fitness is defined by the customer. *The 2D model of quality (Noriaki Kano) - are ‘must-be quality’ and ‘attractive quality’ the first one determines the fitness of the product for use and the second one, the customer expects.
• ‘Value to some person’ (Gerald M. Weinberg). With improvement of quality, the costs come down and productivity goes up and is accomplished by better management of design, engineering, testing and by improvement of processes.
• High quality and lower cost has nice chances to capture market. Cutting the costs without improvement of quality is ridiculous. (W. Edwards Deming).
• The loss a product incurs to the society, after it is shipped (Genichi Taguchi) – This considers the entire production system.
• Energy quality – Associated with energy engineering and qualitative differences in trophic levels.

Applications

Quality can be applied to various fields in mankind. In music Quality denotes ‘timbre’ of the sound or music piece. The term Quality is used in other fields like phonetics, banking, insurance and construction. Most of the modern industries opt for employing appreciable Quality control procedures.