Quality must be define and measured for improvement to be achieved. Yet, a mojor problem in quality engineering is that the work quality lacks a commonly recongnized operational definition. Perhaps the confusion is because quality is not a single idea, but a multidimensional concept. The dimensions of quality include the entity of interest, the viewpoint on that enity, and the quality attributes of that enity. A popular view of quality is that is an intangible trait and that it can be discussed and judge, but cannot be weighed or measured. To many people, quality is similar to what a federal judge once observed about obscenity: "I know it when I see it." From a customer's standpoint, quality is the customer's perceived value of the product he or she purchased, based on a number of variables, such as price, performance, reliability, overall satisfaction, and others.
Your customers are in a perfect position to tell you about Quality, because that's all they're really buying. They're not buying a product. They're buying your assurances that their expectations for that product will be meet.
And you haven't really got anything else to sell them but those assurances. You haven't really got anything else to sell but Quality.
It is clear that the concept of quality must involve customers or, simply put, quallity is conformance to customers' expectations and requirements. Interestingly, the definitions of quality by quality profeddionals are congruent with the implications of the popular views.rom a high-level definition of a concept, to a product being operationally defined, many steps are involved, each of which may be exposed to possible shortcomings. For example, to achieve the state of conformance to requirements, customers' requirements must first be gathered and analyzed, then specifications from those requirements must be developed, and the product must be developed and manufactured appropriately. In each phase of the process, errors may have occurred that will negatively affect the quality of the finished product. The requirements may be erroneous, the development and manufacturing process may be subject to variable that induce defects, and so forth. Form the customer's perspective, satisfaction after the purchase of the product is the ultimate validation that the product conforms to requirements and is fit to use. From the producer's perspective, once requirements are specified, developing and producing the product in accordance with the specifications is the basic step to achieving quality. Usually, for product quality, lack of functional defeats and good reliability are the most basic measures. In order to be "fit for use," the product first has to be reliably functional.
