WHAT IS QUALITY?

The term quality has acquired many meanings,

depending on the people concerned, and the criteria
felt to be important. Quality has been misunderstood
to refer, variously, to luxury goods for the super-rich,
to excellence in the name and achievement, to
products of distinctive design and style, to special
services, to the intricate workmanship of the master
craftsman. However, there are other definitions
widely discussed, and various schools of quality have
grown up around particular versions. Some typical
definitions of quality are:
• Quality is the extent to which the customer or
risers believe the product or service surpasses
.their needs and expectations - Gitlow et al. [1].
• Quality is the totality of features and
characteristics of a product that bear on its ability
to satisfy stated or i.mpliedneeds -ISO [2].
• Good quality means a predictable degree of
uniformity and dependability at a low cost with a
quality suited to the market - Deming [3].
• Quality is the' total composite product and
service characteristics of marketing, engineering,
manufacture and maintenance through which the
product.in use will meet the expecta~ons of the
customer - Feigenbaum [4J..
• Quality is the loss a product causes to society
after being shipped - Taguchi [5J.

• Quality as "conformance to requirement" -

Crosby [6].
Ultimately quality management seeks to create
prosperity through human endeavor. It is a form of
business management committed to customer
satisfaction through continuous improvement. Since
business culture varies from country to country and
from company to company, there is no set standard
form of a good quality management program. Each
single program must be planned and implemented on
the basis of the nature of its activities and
environment

During the last twenty years, the three most

frequently used self-assessment models have been
Japan's Deming Application Prize, the Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award, and the European
Quality Award. Each award is based on a perceived
model of total quality management They do not
focus solely on either product or service perfection or
traditional quality management methods, but consider
a wide range of management activities, behavior and
processes which influence the quality of the final
offerings. The model of the European Quality Award
is divided into two parts: enablers and results. The
enablers are leadership, people management, policy
& strategy, resources, and processes. These five
aspects steer the business and facilitate the
transformation of inputs to outputs. The results are
Enablers
Partnership &
Resource
people satisfaction, customer satisfaction, impact on
society, and business results which are the measure of
the level of output attained by the or~on. The
model consists of. nine primary elements which are
further divided into a number of secondary elements .
(Fig. 2) [8].
TQM and ISO 9000
The ISO 9001:1987 as the most important
rew-esentative of the ISO. 9000 series was issued to
set a basis for quality management on a common
level. Recently revised for the second time its former
20 element structure was abandoned in favor of a
new pattern based on processes (Fig. 3). Customer.
requirements shall be transformed in customer
satisfaction by a management system [2, 9, 10, 11].
The revised ISO. 9000:2000 series are based on eight
quality management principles. These principles can
be used by senior management as a framework to
guide their organizations towards improved
performance. The principles' are derived from the
collective experience and knowledge of the
international experts who participate in the ISO.
Technical Committee ISo.rrC 176, Quality
management and quality assurance, which is
responsible for developing and maintaining the ISO.
9000 Standards.
The labor force is entirely to blame for poor
quality: Manufacturers-in developing countries often
blame the low quality of their products on the lack of
quality consciousness and poor work culture of their
workers.
Quality improvement requires large investments:
There is a widely held notion that an organized
quality improvement pro~ needs heavy
investment in new plant and equipment However,
this is not necessarily true. Plants constitute only·one
components of a ·total quality system and by
themselves, they are not sufficient to assure high
quality.
Quality can be assured by strict inspection:
Inspection was the first formal quality - control
mechanism at the beginning of this century and most
manufacturers still believe that quality can be
improved by strict inspection. It should be clearly
understood that inspection can only lead to the
segregation of good from bad pieces; it can not by
itself improve the quality of a manufactured product.