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1 The Meaning of Quality and Quality Improvement

• Most people have a conceptual understanding of quality as relating to

one or more desirable characteristics that a product or service should
possess.
• Quality has become one of the most important consumer decision
factors in the selection among competing products and services.
1.1.1 Dimensions of Quality
• key points concerning these dimensions of quality as follows:
1. Performance (Will the product do the intended job?) Potential customers
usually evaluate a product to determine if it will perform certain specific
functions and determine how well it performs them.
2. Reliability (How often does the product fail?) Complex products, such as
many appliances, automobiles, or airplanes, will usually require some repair
over their service life.
3. Durability (How long does the product last?) his is the effective service life
of the product. Customers obviously want products that perform
satisfactorily over a long period of time.
4. Serviceability (How easy is it to repair the product?) There are many
industries in which the customer’s view of quality is directly influenced by
how quickly and economically a repair or routine maintenance activity can
be accomplished.
Basic Concepts
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Quality is inversely proportional to variability
Reduced variability has directly translated into lower costs.
Fewer repairs and warranty claims means less rework and
the reduction of wasted time, effort, and money.
Quality improvement is the reduction of variability in
processes and products.
Excessive variability in process performance often results
in waste. For example, consider the wasted money, time,
and effort that is associated with the repairs represented
As an example of the operational effectiveness of this definition, a few years ago, one of the
automobile companies in the United States performed a comparative study of a transmission that
was manufactured in a domestic plant and by a Japanese supplier. An analysis of warranty claims and
repair costs indicated that there was a striking difference between the two sources of production,
with the Japanese-produced transmission having much lower costs, as shown in Fig. 1.1. As part of
the study to discover the cause of this difference in cost and performance, the company selected
random samples of transmissions from each plant, disassembled them, and measured several critical
quality characteristics.
A Brief History of Quality Control and Improvement
• 1700–1900 Quality is largely determined by the efforts of an
individual craftsman
• 1900–1930 Henry Ford—the assembly line—further refinement of
work methods to improve productivity and quality; Ford developed
mistake-proof assembly concepts, self-checking, and in-process
inspection.