Quality management: An Introduction to Quality Management on the web-site for teachers and learners of English as a secondary language from a German point of view providing teaching and learning strategies in schools and seminars.
go back to the table of contents
Table of contents		 Introduction
to Quality		 HOMEback to the homepagePAGE back to the previous page back to
Qualitätsmanagement
in der Praxis		 go on to:
Total Quality
Management 		on to the next page

1.0 Introduction to Quality

1.1 What is Quality?

Quality can be interpreted as "Customer's expressed and implied requirements are met fully". This is a core statement from which some eminent definitions of quality have been derived. They include: "the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to meet a stated or implied need" [ISO, 1994], "fitness for use" [Juran, 1988], and "conformance to requirement" [Crosby, 1979]. It is important to note that satisfying the customers' needs and expectations is the main factor in all these definitions. Therefore it is an imperative for a company to identify such needs early in the product/service development cycle. The ability to define accurately the needs related to design, performance, price, safety, delivery, and other business activities and processes will place a firm ahead of its competitors in the market. In 1992 Crosby broadened his definition for quality adding an integrated notion to it: "Quality meaning getting everyone to do what they have agreed to do and to do it right the first time is the skeletal structure of an organisation, finance is the nourishment, and relationships are the soul." Some Japanese companies find that "conformance to a standard" too narrowly reflects the actual meaning of quality and consequently have started to use a newer definition of quality as "providing extraordinary customer satisfaction". There is a trend in modern day competition among Japanese companies to give you rather more in order to 'delight' you. So when you buy a lamp bulb which has a 'mean time between failure' of 1,000 hours, the Japanese manufacturer will try their best to ensure that you can get at least 20% more. Likewise, when you buy a Japanese brand video tape specifying 180 minutes, it can normally record up to 190 minutes. When you buy a 'mink' coat from a department store in Japan, they would invite you to store the fur coat in their temperature-control room during the hot summer season free-of-charge. They call these extra little things as 'extra-ordinary customer satisfaction' or 'delighting the customers'

1.2 Definition of Quality

Despite being in use for nearly 50 years, the term TQM still poses problems of definition for writers on quality, and consequently often remain a rather abstract term. There are a number of well-known quality definitions. ISO 8402 [ISO, 1986] defines quality as "the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to meet a stated or implied need". [Crosby, 1979] defines quality as "conformance to requirement". [Juran, 1988] defines quality as "fitness for use". Japanese companies found the old definition of quality "the degree of conformance to a standard" too narrow and consequently have started to use a new definition of quality as "user satisfaction" [Wayne, 1983]. Table below defines quality from the view point of different quality professionals and to provide a conceptual scheme for the discussion of TQM. This can be classified in three sections: Customer-base, Service and Manufacturing-base, and Value-based definition.

go back to the table of contents
Table of contents		 Introduction
to Quality		 HOMEback to the homepagePAGE back to the previous page back to
Qualitätsmanagement in der Praxis		 go on to:
Total Quality Management 		on to the next page