In
business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
,
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
, and
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
, quality – or high quality – has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or
superiority of something (
goods
In economics, goods are items that satisfy human wants
and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods which are transferable, and services, which are not t ...
or
services
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...
); it is also defined as being suitable for the intended purpose (fitness for purpose) while satisfying customer expectations. Quality is a perceptual, conditional, and somewhat
subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people.
Consumers may focus on the
specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the
conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is
reliable,
maintainable, or
sustainable
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...
. In such ways, the subjectivity of quality is rendered
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
via
operational definition
An operational definition specifies concrete, replicable procedures designed to represent a construct. In the words of American psychologist S.S. Stevens (1935), "An operation is the performance which we execute in order to make known a concept." F ...
s and measured with
metrics
Metric or metrical may refer to:
* Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement
* An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement
Mathematics
In mathema ...
such as
proxy measures.
Description
There are many aspects of quality in a business context, though primary is the idea the business
produces something, whether it be a physical good or a particular service. These goods and/or services and how they are produced involve many types of processes, procedures, equipment, personnel, and investments, which all fall under the quality umbrella. Key aspects of quality and how it's diffused throughout the business are rooted in the concept of
quality management
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not ...
:
# Quality
planning
Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the capacity to think ahead, is consi ...
is implemented as a means of "developing the products, systems, and processes needed to meet or exceed customer expectations."
This includes defining who the customers are, determining their needs, and developing the tools (systems, processes, etc.) needed to meet those needs.
#
Quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to ensure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...
is implemented as a means of providing enough confidence that business requirements and goals (as outlined in quality planning) for a product and/or service will be fulfilled. This error prevention is done through systematic measurement, comparison with a standard, and monitoring of processes.
#
Quality control
Quality control (QC) is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. ISO 9000 defines quality control as "a part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements".
This approach places ...
(QC) is implemented as a means of fulfilling quality requirements, reviewing all factors involved in production. The business confirms that the good or service produced meets organizational goals, often using tools such as
operational auditing
Operational audit is a systematic review of effectiveness, efficiency and economy of operation. Operational audit is a future-oriented, systematic, and independent evaluation of organizational activities.
In Operational audit financial data may ...
and
inspection. QC is focused on process output.
#
Quality improvement
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not o ...
is implemented as a means of providing mechanisms for the evaluation and improvement of processes, etc. in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. This may be done with noticeably significant changes or incrementally via
continual improvement
A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakth ...
.
While quality management and its tenets are relatively recent phenomena, the idea of quality in business is not new. In the early 1900s, pioneers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford recognized the limitations of the methods being used in mass production at the time and the subsequent varying quality of output, implementing quality control, inspection, and standardization procedures in their work.
Later in the twentieth century, the likes of
William Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematica ...
and
Joseph M. Juran
Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was a Romanian-born American engineer and management consultant. He was an evangelist for quality and quality management, having written several books on those subjects. He was the brot ...
helped take quality to new heights, initially in Japan and later (in the late '70s and early '80s) globally.
Customers recognize that quality is an important attribute in products and services, and suppliers recognize that quality can be an important differentiator between their own offerings and those of competitors (the quality gap). In the past two decades this quality gap has been gradually decreasing between competitive products and services. This is partly due to the contracting (also called outsourcing) of manufacturing to countries like China and India, as well internationalization of trade and competition. These countries, among many others, have raised their own standards of quality in order to meet international standards and customer demands.
The
ISO 9000
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
series of standards are probably the best known international standards for quality management, though specialized standards such as
ISO 15189
''ISO 15189 Medical laboratories — Requirements for quality and competence'' is an international standard that specifies the quality management system requirements particular to medical laboratories. The standard was developed by the Internatio ...
(for medical laboratories) and
ISO 14001 (for environmental management) also exist.
The business meanings of ''quality'' have developed over time. Various interpretations are given below:
#
American Society for Quality
The American Society for Quality (ASQ), formerly the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC), is a society of quality professionals, with nearly 80,000 members.
History
ASQC was established on 16 February 1946 by 253 members in Milwaukee, ...
: "A combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives for which each person has his or her own definition; examples of which include, "Meeting the
requirements and expectations in service or product that were committed to" and "Pursuit of optimal solutions contributing to confirmed successes, fulfilling accountabilities". In technical usage, quality can have two meanings:
#:a. The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs;
#:b. A product or service free of deficiencies."
#
Subir Chowdhury
Subir Chowdhury ( bn, সুবীর চৌধুরী; born 12 January 1967) is the author of 15 books and noted for his work in Quality (business)#Market sector perspectives, quality and management. He is currently the chairman and CEO of ASI ...
: "Quality combines people power and process power."
#
Philip B. Crosby
Philip Bayard "Phil" Crosby, (June 18, 1926 – August 18, 2001) was a businessman and author who contributed to management theory and quality management practices.
Crosby initiated the Zero Defects program at the Martin Company. As the quali ...
: "Conformance to requirements."
The requirements may not fully represent
customer
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...
expectations; Crosby treats this as a separate problem.
#
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
: concentrating on "the efficient production of the quality that the market expects," and he linked quality and management: "Costs go down and productivity goes up as improvement of quality is accomplished by better management of design, engineering, testing and by improvement of processes."
#
Peter Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker (; ; November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business co ...
: "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for."
#
ISO 9000
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
: "Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements." The standard defines ''requirement'' as need or expectation.
#
Joseph M. Juran
Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was a Romanian-born American engineer and management consultant. He was an evangelist for quality and quality management, having written several books on those subjects. He was the brot ...
: "Fitness for use."
Fitness is defined by the customer.
#
Noriaki Kano
Noriaki Kano (狩野紀昭 ''Kanō Noriaki,'' pronounced ) is a Japanese educator, lecturer, writer, and consultant in the field of quality management. He is the developer of a customer satisfaction model (now known as the Kano model) whose simp ...
and others, present a two-dimensional model of quality: "must-be quality" and "attractive quality." The former is near to "fitness for use" and the latter is what the customer would love, but has not yet thought about. Supporters characterize this model more succinctly as: "
Products
Product may refer to:
Business
* Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem.
* Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution
Mathematics
* Produ ...
and
services that meet or exceed customers' expectations."
#
Robert Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels '' Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values'' (1974) and '' Lila: ...
: "The result of care."
#
Six Sigma: "Number of defects per million opportunities."
#
Genichi Taguchi
was an engineer and statistician. From the 1950s onwards, Taguchi developed a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured goods. Taguchi methods have been controversial among some conventional Western statisticians, ...
, with two definitions:
#:a. "Uniformity around a target value." The idea is to lower the
standard deviation
In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while ...
in outcomes, and to keep the range of outcomes to a certain number of standard deviations, with rare exceptions.
#:b. "The loss a product imposes on society after it is shipped." This definition of quality is based on a more comprehensive view of the production system.
#
Gerald M. Weinberg: "Value to some person".
Market sector perspectives
Operations management
Traditionally, quality acts as one of five operations/project performance objectives dictated by
operations management policy. Operations management, by definition, focuses on the most effective and efficient ways for creating and delivering a good or service that satisfies customer needs and expectations.
As such, its ties to quality are apparent. The five performance objectives which give business a way to measure their operational performance are:
* quality, measuring how well a product or service conforms to specifications;
* speed (or
response time
Response time may refer to:
*The time lag between an electronic input and the output signal which depends upon the value of passive components used.
* Responsiveness, how quickly an interactive system responds to user input
* Response time (biolog ...
), measuring the delay between customer request and customer receipt of a product or service;
*
dependability
In systems engineering, dependability is a measure of a system's availability, reliability, maintainability, and in some cases, other characteristics such as durability, safety and security. In real-time computing, dependability is the ability to ...
, measuring how consistently a product or service can be delivered to meet customer expectation;
*
flexibility
Stiffness is the extent to which an object resists deformation in response to an applied force.
The complementary concept is flexibility or pliability: the more flexible an object is, the less stiff it is.
Calculations
The stiffness, k, of a bo ...
, measuring how quickly the business can adapt to a variety of market changes; and
*
cost
In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which ...
, measuring the resources (and by extension, financed) required to plan, deliver, and improve the finished good or service.
Based on an earlier model called the sand cone model, these objectives support each other, with quality at the base.
By extension, quality increases dependability, reduces cost, and increases customer satisfaction.
Manufacturing
The early 1920s saw a slow but gradual movement among manufacturers away from a "maximum production" philosophy to one aligned more closely with "positive and continuous control of quality to definite standards in the factory."
That standardization, further pioneered by Deming and Juran later in the twentieth century,
has become deeply integrated into how manufacturing businesses operate today. The introduction of the
ISO 9001, 9002, and 9003 standards in 1987 — based on work from previous British and U.S. military standards — sought to "provide organizations with the requirements to create a
quality management system (QMS) for a range of different business activities."
Additionally,
good manufacturing practice
Current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) are those conforming to the guidelines recommended by relevant agencies. Those agencies control the authorization and licensing of the manufacture and sale of food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceut ...
(GMP) standards became more common place in countries around the world, laying out the minimum requirements manufacturers in industries including
food
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inge ...
and
beverages
A drink or beverage is a liquid intended for human consumption. In addition to their basic function of satisfying thirst, drinks play important roles in human culture. Common types of drinks include plain drinking water, milk, juice, smoothies a ...
,
cosmetics
Cosmetics are constituted mixtures of chemical compounds derived from either natural sources, or synthetically created ones. Cosmetics have various purposes. Those designed for personal care and skin care can be used to cleanse or protect ...
,
pharmaceutical products
A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and rel ...
,
dietary supplements,
and
medical device
A medical device is any device intended to be used for medical purposes. Significant potential for hazards are inherent when using a device for medical purposes and thus medical devices must be proved safe and effective with reasonable assura ...
s
must meet to assure their products are consistently high in quality. Process improvement philosophies such as
Six Sigma and
Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma is a method that uses a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste and reducing variation. It combines lean manufacturing/lean enterprise and Six Sigma to eliminate the eight kinds of waste ( ...
have further pushed quality to the forefront of business management and operations. At the heart of these and other efforts is often the QMS, a documented collection of processes, management models, business strategies, human capital, and information technology used to plan, develop, deploy, evaluate, and improve a set of models, methods, and tools across an organization for the purpose of improving quality that aligns with the organization's strategic goals.
Service sector
The push to integrate the concept of quality into the functions of the service industry takes a slightly different path from manufacturing. Where manufacturers focus on "tangible, visible, persistent issues," many — but not all — quality aspects of the service provider's output are intangible and fleeting.
Other obstacles include management's perceptions not aligning with customer expectations due to lack of communication and market research and the improper or lack of delivery of skill-based knowledge to personnel.
Like manufacturing, customer expectations are key in the service industry, though the degree with which the service interacts with the customer definitely shapes perceived service quality. Perceptions such as being dependable, responsive, understanding, competent, and clean (which are difficult to describe tangibly) may drive service quality,
somewhat in contrast to factors that drive measurement of manufacturing quality.
Quality in Japanese culture
In Japanese culture, there are two types of quality: ''atarimae hinshitsu'' and ''miryokuteki hinshitsu''.
* ''atarimae hinshitsu'' – The idea that things will work as they are supposed to (e.g. a pen will write). The functional requirement actually. For example, a wall or flooring in a house have functional parts in the house as a product; when the functionality is met, the "atarimae" quality requirement is met.
* ''miryokuteki hinshitsu'' (魅力的品質)– The idea that things should have an aesthetic quality which is different from "atarimae hinshitsu" (e.g. a pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer, and leave behind ink that is pleasing to the reader). The floor and wall example can be expanded to include the color, texture, shine, polish, etc., which are the "miryokuteki" aspects. Such aspects comprise a very important part of the quality, and add value to the product.
In the design of goods or services, ''atarimae hinshitsu'' and ''miryokuteki hinshitsu'' together ensure that a creation will both work to customers' expectations and also be desirable to have.
Quality management techniques
*
Quality management systems
*
Total quality management (TQM)
*
Design of experiments
The design of experiments (DOE, DOX, or experimental design) is the design of any task that aims to describe and explain the variation of information under conditions that are hypothesized to reflect the variation. The term is generally associ ...
**
Fractional factorial design
In statistics, fractional factorial designs are experimental designs consisting of a carefully chosen subset (fraction) of the experimental runs of a full factorial design. The subset is chosen so as to exploit the sparsity-of-effects principle ...
**
Optimal design
In the design of experiments, optimal designs (or optimum designs) are a class of design of experiments, experimental designs that are Optimization (mathematics), optimal with respect to some statistical theory, statistical objective function, ...
**
Response surface methodology
In statistics, response surface methodology (RSM) explores the relationships between several explanatory variables and one or more response variables. The method was introduced by George E. P. Box and K. B. Wilson in 1951. The main idea of RSM ...
*
Continuous improvement
A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakth ...
*
Six Sigma
*
Statistical Process Control
Statistical process control (SPC) or statistical quality control (SQC) is the application of statistical methods to monitor and control the quality of a production process. This helps to ensure that the process operates efficiently, producing ...
(SPC)
*
Quality circle
A quality circle or quality control circle is a group of workers who do the same or similar work, who meet regularly to identify, analyze and solve work-related problems. It consists of minimum three and maximum twelve members in number. Normally ...
s
*
Requirements analysis
In systems engineering and software engineering, requirements analysis focuses on the tasks that determine the needs or conditions to meet the new or altered product or project, taking account of the possibly conflicting requirements of the ...
*
Verification and validation
Verification and validation (also abbreviated as V&V) are independent procedures that are used together for checking that a product, service, or system meets requirements and specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose. These are ...
*
Zero Defects
Zero Defects (or ZD) is a collaborative programme or philosophy within an organisation, whereby everyone works together towards the ideal goal of there being no defects in quality. As a management-led program to eliminate defects in industrial p ...
*
Service quality Service quality (SQ), in its contemporary conceptualisation, is a comparison of perceived expectations (E) of a service with perceived performance (P), giving rise to the equation SQ=P-E. This conceptualistion of service quality has its origins in ...
*
SERVQUAL
SERVQUAL is a multi-dimensional research instrument designed to capture consumer expectations and perceptions of a service along five dimensions that are believed to represent service quality. SERVQUAL is built on the expectancy-disconfirmation p ...
*
Theory of Constraints (TOC)
*
Business process management
Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business p ...
(BPM)
*
Business process re-engineering
Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to help organizations fundam ...
*
Capability maturity model The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a development model created in 1986 after a study of data collected from organizations that contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense, who funded the research. The term "maturity" relates to the degree of ...
s
*
Quality function deployment
Quality function deployment (QFD) a method developed in Japan beginning in 1966 to help transform the voice of the customer into engineering characteristics for a product.Larson et al. (2009). p. 117. Yoji Akao, the original developer, described QF ...
(QFD)
Quality awards
*
Deming Prize
The Deming Prize is the longest-running and one of the highest awards on TQM (Total Quality Management) in the world. It recognizes both individuals for their contributions to the field of Total Quality Management (TQM) and businesses that have s ...
*
EFQM Excellence Award
*
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige Award is the highest formal recognition of the performance excellen ...
See also
*
Common law of business balance
The common law of business balance, usually expressed as "you get what you pay for", is the principle that one cannot pay a little and get a lot. In addition, paying a cheap price will not guarantee the buyer will receive a product of high qualit ...
*
Eight dimensions of quality
*
Innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
and
Tax deduction
Tax deduction is a reduction of income that is able to be taxed and is commonly a result of expenses, particularly those incurred to produce additional income. Tax deductions are a form of tax incentives, along with exemptions and tax credits. T ...
*
ISO 9000
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
*
Metaphysics of quality
*
Quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to ensure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...
*
Quality control
Quality control (QC) is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. ISO 9000 defines quality control as "a part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements".
This approach places ...
*
Quality engineering
Quality engineering is the discipline of engineering concerned with the principles and practice of product and service quality assurance and control. In software development, it is the management, development, operation and maintenance of IT sys ...
*
Quality investing
*
Six Sigma
*
Software quality
*
Theory of constraints
*
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
*
List of economics topics
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics:
Economics – analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It aims to explain how economies work and how economic agen ...
*
List of production topics
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to production:
Production – act of creating 'use' value or 'utility' that can satisfy a want or need. The act may or may not include factors of production other than l ...
References
Bibliography
* Boone, Louis E. & Kurtz, David L., Contemporary Business 2006, Thomson South-Western, 2006
* Rochfort Scott, Charles & Hamerton, Robert Jacob, ''Rambles in Egypt and Candia: With Details of the Military Power and Resources of Those Countries, and Observations on the Government, Policy, and Commercial System of Mohammed Ali'', Volume I, H. Colburn, London, 1837
External links
Quality Management links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quality (Business)
Product management
Quality management