Edward Hall
Topics in Technology
and Management
An Introduction to Quality.
What is Quality, and what does a quality manager actually do?
Often when I have introduced myself as a quality manager, the conversation eventually drifts to 'what exactly does a quality manager do?'. So the following looks to introduce quality management thinking and some of its application areas.
The following are some abridged or paraphrased definitions of quality from some of the thinkers in the field.
|
Quality Thinker |
Definition of quality |
|
Philip B. Crosby |
conformance to requirements |
|
W. Edwards Deming |
...reduction in variation around the desired output |
|
Joseph Juran |
fitness for purpose |
|
John S. Oakland |
Quality is meeting the customer's requirements |
The International standard ISO 9000 defines quality as "The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements".
As such, quality is a broad idea that can cover anything that relates how well a business or its products 'meets requirements' or produces something that is 'fit for purpose'. Fitness for purpose can consider almost anything; cost, when is it available, how long it lasts, how heavy it is, whether it makes the customer feel good just because of the brand (some Apple fans may appreciate this...).
Quality management therefore tends to be concerned with both 'conformance to requirements' and 'fitness for purpose'. Often, the only person whose opinion matters on whether something is fit for purpose or not is the customer, as they are the ones we want to come back for more. Therefore, customer satisfaction is an important issue in measuring fitness for purpose, and in measuring overall quality.
A quality manager therefore helps a business by developing systems and business approaches that enable a business's 'products', whether those products be a physical item for sale or a service provided to a customer, to be 'fit for purpose' as measured by the customer.
A Customer Focus
One of the joys of quality is the issue of how do you actually measure it. For example, is a Rolls Royce car quality?
Well, a Rolls Royce car is very well built, has a well made engine, and fitted using the best materials - so how could a Rolls Royce not be quality? The answer lies in the customer viewpoint. If the customer is struggling financially on their income, just managing to make their payments each week, only has a small garage to park the car in, then a Rolls Royce may not be a good fit for their purpose, and if not fit for purpose, then not quality from their viewpoint, or worded more accurately, not quality in fulfilling their requirements.
So therefore, when determining what quality is, one needs to identify the requirements that we are trying to fulfill, and what is quality against one set of requirements may not be quality against another set.
Practical Definitions of Quality
Two very useful and practical definitions of quality are:
Fulfills Requirements: The fulfills requirements definition is very useful wherever a contract is involved, which has performance or specification requirements. The contract requirements hopefully express what the customer is after, and therefore the requirements that we need to measure quality against.
Fitness for Purpose: This definition is useful where we do not have a contract, such as in a retail product areas for example, and we need to produce something that we hope a customer will want to buy. In this case, we need to identify why somebody might want to use our product, and ensure it is fit for that purpose.
Occasionally, a scenario occurs where a product might meet the specification we were building it to, but is still not fit for purpose. For example, the specification may have missed out an important and critical feature. To help prevent this, some of our quality tools should be employed early in the contract or production process to ensure that what we are building is both to the requirements and is also fit for purpose. Examples might be design reviews that involve the end customer, or maybe a prototype of the product we are producing to help the customer get an idea of what the end product may actually be like.
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Copyright 2014 Edward Hall. All rights reserved.
Last revised 17 May 2014.