QUALITY DEFINED
✓ Quality as per Ed Deming – The dictionary lists many definitions of quality. A short definition that has received wide acceptance is: ‘Quality is customer satisfaction’. An alternative short definition is: ‘Quality is fitness for use’.
✓ Broadly defined, the term ‘quality’ refers to the ability of a product or service to consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. In simple terms, quality means getting what you pay for.
✓ However, quality has been defined in various ways by many authors and some of the important definitions of quality are given below:
| 1. Quality is fitness for use. -Juran |
| 2. Quality is conformance to requirements. – crosby |
| 3. Quality is a predictable degree of uniformity and dependability , at low cost and suited to the market. – Deming |
| 4. Quality is the (minimum) loss imparted by a product to society from the time the product is shipped. – Taguchi |
| 5. Quality is in its essence, a way of managing the organisation. -Feigenbaum |
| 6. Quality is correcting and preventing loss, not living with loss. – Hoshin |
| 7. The universally accepted definition of quality which is provided by International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), is as follows: “Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service, that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs of the customer.” -ISO |
✓ It should be noted that the definition of quality is common both to products and services. It is essentially satisfying the customers’ stated and unstated (implied) needs.
Quality can be quantified as follows:
| Q = P/ E |
where 𝑄= Quality,
𝑃= Performance, and
𝐸= Expectations.
If 𝑄 is greater than 1.0, then the customer has a good feeling about the product or service. The determination of 𝑃 and 𝐸 will most likely be based on perception with the organization determining performance and the customer determining expectations.
Definitions of Other Key Words
The above definitions of the word quality include certain key words (such as customer, product, product features, etc.) that themselves require definition.
1.Product
✓ Two categories of product are:
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Goods : Goods are physical things such as cell phone, pen, television, bike, etc.
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Services : Service is work performed for someone else. Banking, insurance, transportation, health care industries, etc., are established to provide services.
Service also includes support activities within companies, e.g., payroll preparation, secretarial support, and plant maintenance.
2. Product Features
✓ A product feature is a property that is possessed by a product and that is intended to meet certain customers’ needs and thereby provide customer satisfaction.
✓ Product features refer to the quality of design.
✓ Product features may be technological in nature. For example, the fuel consumption of a vehicle, the dimensions of a mechanical component, the viscosity of a chemical, or the uniformity of the voltage of an electric power supply.
✓ Product features may also take other forms. For example, promptness of delivery, ease of maintenance, and courtesy of service.
Throughout this book, the term ‘product’ means goods and/or services.
Differences between goods and services:
| Characteristics | Goods | Services |
| Output | Tangible (i.e., can be seen or touched) | Intangible |
| Customer contact | Low | High |
| Uniformity of input | High | Low |
| Labour content | Low | High |
| Uniformity of output | High | Low |
| Measurement of productivity | Easy | Difficult |
| Opportunity to correct quality problems before delivery to customer | High | Low |
3. Customer
✓ A customer is anyone who receives or is affected by the product or process.
✓ Types of customers: Customers may be external or internal.
(i) External customers: a The customers outside the company are called external customers.
External customers include clients/end users who buy the product, government regulatory bodies, and the public.
(ii) Internal customers: – The customers inside the company are called internal customers.
Internal customers are members of the company that produces the product. For example, quality department receives product from manufacturing department, so quality department is an internal customer.
4. Stated and Implied Needs
✓ The stated needs are the needs which the customer specifies for procurement of the goods or services.
✓ The implied needs are the associated functions the product is supposed to perform irrespective of whether they are stated or not.
✓ For example, the stated need for a customer while buying a pen may be a certain specification and price range, whereas implied need is that the pen should be able to write clearly, legibly, and smoothly till the time the ink gets exhausted.
5. Customer Satisfaction
✓ Customer satisfaction is a state of affairs in which customers feel that their expectations have been met by the product features.
6. Customer Dissatisfaction
✓ Customer dissatisfaction is a state of affairs in which deficiencies (in goods or services) result in customer annoyance, complaints, claims, and so on.
7. Deficiencies
✓ A product deficiency is a product failure that results in product dissatisfaction.
✓ Deficiencies are stated in different units, such as errors, defects, failures, off specification, etc.
✓ Freedom from deficiencies refers to quality of conformance.
| Read More Topics |
| Discuss the contribution of juran for quality in detail |
| Mention important principles of TQM |
| Describe the various contributions of Deming |
