What is quality about?

What is quality? 

The term quality is often misused, Philip B. Crosby exemplifies: sometimes we say the famous phrase "quality of life" but in reality Are we talking about?

As a parody, if you ask someone from Tanzania, what is quality of life? insurance answer ... have a plate of food on hand ... on the other hand if we made the same question to the wealthiest in the world would say that ... have two or three private islands decorated in gold would humbly comforting ...

Perhaps these are not the exact words but it is clear that for each of us, how are you are assertions concerning social class, politics, gender, profession, field of study, etc.. It is necessary to note that for most of us the meaning of quality in the background is nothing but Superiority and / or excellence (this is not wrong, just that it is also relative)

How do we define quality? The most common definition found in dictionaries is:

1) Quality is the totality of characteristics of a product or service that meet customer needs.
2) Give the customer what they want, how they want and when they want.
3) property or set of properties inherent to a person or thing that allow to appreciate relative to the properties of their species.

I like more the latter because it can be molded to any field, although there are still elements that define quality blue oceans, but even adaptations to certain approaches may be performed, for example:

-If we define quality of a product over another: Is the degree to which the characteristics and properties of a product differ from another with respect to established or accepted by customers specifications.

-The user or customer perspective defines it as: The ability to satisfy the desires of consumers and / or exceed customer expectations.

The prospect of the manufacture of a product is defined as: The relative degree of compliance with the design specifications of a product and its ability to improve the level of compliance and to improve the same specifications to the requirements of customers.

These last three are the most common found, have certain connotations that include a longer range but the simplest definitions devised by the masters of quality are set:

Philip Crosby: "Quality is meeting requirements"
Joseph Juran: "Quality is fitness for use of the customer."
Armand V. Feigenbam: "Meeting customer expectations."
Genichi Taguchi: "Quality is the least possible loss to society."
William Edwards Deming: "Quality is customer satisfaction."
Walter A. Shewhart: "Quality as a result of the interaction of two dimensions: subjective dimension (what the customer wants) and objective dimension (what is offered).

Comparing: Juran see that adopts an approach to product and customer at a time, Feigenbam, Deming and Shewhart focus on the customer and Taguchi Crosby and focus their theories to the manufacture of the product.

The perspective of the product conforms to Juran
The user perspective to Juran, Feigenbam, Deming and Shewhart fits
The manufacturing perspective fits Croby and Taguchi.

In terms of industries, the quality is not yet fully defined under these terms. It turns out that satisfying the customer is not enough, if the company providing the product or service disappears.

A definition of what is quality for the role of Quality Engineer (is the person who manages the most important activities in this respect) must consider all the elements involved in it; both the client and the provider in a win-win. That said we quote every detail in this regard:

Customer, we know you always want the most durable, greater in quantity, easy to acquire and at less cost. For many products, some attributes such as color, smell, taste, etc.. are requirements that vary over time, seasonal or year.

Provider know that just wants to get the maximum benefits for which we need optimum, minimum waste and maximum process operating performance.

From this we can say that quality, in the role of quality engineer is: The degree to which the inherent properties of a product and its monetary value, meeting or exceeding (being accepted) the expectations of customers and the means to achieve remain outside of the profitability and competitiveness.


This definition accommodates clients considering their requirements (what the customer wants) and cost. on the other hand welcomes the provider for the emphasis on profitability. After all, for the supplier, quality is satisfying customers profitably.