Any company today faces a very turbulent business environment. The constant race to conquer customers generates an environment of competition that is stronger every day and the only way to survive in this environment is to create higher quality products. That is why there is no more important issue in business today than quality. The future of our nation depends on our ability to offer the highest quality goods and services. Therefore, it is essential to define what is understood by quality. In this regard, innumerable definitions have been proposed, some more comprehensive than others. To begin, the definitions of quality promulgated by some of the quality gurus are discussed:
Phil Crosby (Crosby, 1979) quality is: Adjusting to the specifications or compliance with some requirements.
WE Deming (Deming, 1982) is: The perceptible degree of uniformity and reliability at low cost and appropriate to customer needs.
Feigenbaum (Feigenbaum, 1990), all the characteristics of the product and service from Marketing, Manufacturing Engineering and Maintenance that are directly related to the needs of the client, are considered quality.
Joseph Jurán (Jurán, 1993) defines quality as: Adequate for use, meeting customer needs.
Some institutions have also defined the term quality, some examples of them are listed below:
The ISO family of standards (ISO 9000: 2000) defines it as the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics meets requirements.
The Royal Spanish Academy defines quality as: "Property or set of properties inherent to a thing that allows it to be appreciated as equal, worse or better than the rest of its kind."
The American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) defines quality as: "Set of characteristics of a product, service or process that give it its ability to satisfy the needs of the user or customer."
Throughout history the term quality has undergone numerous changes that should be reflected in terms of its historical evolution. To do this, we will describe each of the stages the concept of quality and which were the objectives to be pursued.
| Stage | Concept | Purpose |
| Handcrafted | Doing things well regardless of the cost or effort required to do so. |
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| Industrial Revolution | Do many things regardless of whether they are of quality. (Production with Quality is identified). |
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| Second World War | Ensure the effectiveness of the armament regardless of cost, with the largest and fastest production (Efficiency + Term = Quality) | Guaranteeing the availability of effective weapons in the right quantity and time. |
| Postwar (Japan) | Get it right the first time |
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| Postwar (Rest of the world) | Produce, the more the better | Meeting the high demand for goods caused by the war |
| QA | Production inspection techniques to prevent defective goods from leaving. | Meet the technical requirements of the product. |
| Quality assurance | Systems and procedures of the organization to prevent defective goods from being produced. |
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| Total quality | Theory of business administration focused on the permanent satisfaction of customer expectations. |
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This evolution helps us to understand where the need to offer a higher quality of the product or service that is provided to the client and, ultimately, to society comes from, and how little by little the entire organization has been involved in achieving this end. Quality has not only become one of the essential requirements of the product, but is now a key strategic factor that most organizations depend on, not only to maintain their position in the market but even to ensure their survival..
Philip Crosby affirms that " Total Quality is the fulfillment of the requirements, where the system is prevention, the standard is zero defects and the measure is the price of non-compliance ".
Joseph Juran declares that “(…) is to be fit for use, from structural, sensory, time-oriented, commercial and ethical points of view based on parameters of design quality, compliance quality, skill, safety of the product and service in the field ”.
Kaoru Ishikawa: Total Quality is when a product is achieved that is economical, useful and satisfactory for the consumer It is said that a product or service is of quality when it satisfies the needs or expectations of the user or client, based on parameters such as:
- Security that the product or service confer on the customer Reliability or ability of the product or service to fulfill the specified functions, without failures and for a specified period Service or measure that the manufacturer and distributor respond in case of failure of the product or service.
For some, the relationship between the quality of a product or service and the price that the customer must pay is not sufficiently contemplated in the previous definitions and they prefer to define quality by clearly indicating the quality / price, which will ultimately be the differential aspect in the one that the customer will be based on when purchasing a product or service. And therefore we can define quality as what the client is willing to pay based on what he obtains and values.
The previous definitions coincide in that quality consists in the satisfaction of customer requirements, which increasingly cover more edges and therefore become more demanding.
The definitions also reflect different points of view, so for a better analysis they have been grouped into several categories that are listed below:
Transcendent definitions
They consider quality as an innate quality, it is an absolutely and universally recognized characteristic. High quality works are those that go beyond fashions, whose quality image endures invariably over time.
Quality is occasionally related to precision craftsmanship, as opposed to mass manufacturing. For example, the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci would be a work whose quality no one would doubt.
The promoters of this transcendent conception of quality deny the possibility of giving a precise definition of quality, since one learns to recognize it through one's own experience.
Examples of transcendent definitions:
"Quality is neither matter nor spirit, but a third entity independent of the other two…, even though quality cannot be defined, you know well what it is." Robert Pirsing.
"A condition of excellence that implies good quality as opposed to low quality… Quality is achieving or reaching the highest level instead of being content with the sloppy or fraudulent." Barbara W. Tuchman.
They consider quality as a measurable characteristic. Quality differences mean differences in the quantity of an ingredient or quality that the product has. This leads to a hierarchical conception of quality, since depending on the quantity of the desired attribute that the product contains, it is possible to order the products from lower to higher quality. A classification free of ambiguities will only be possible if there is an equivalent classification, valid for all buyers, according to the characteristic in question. For example, if wool is considered a quality characteristic and two sweaters are offered: one 100% wool and the other 75% wool, the 100% wool sweater will be considered the best quality.
These types of definitions emerged in the field of economics. At first, the economy identified quality with the durability of the product, since thus quality was easily incorporated into economic models.
Example of product-based definitions:
"Differences in quality are equivalent to differences in quantity of some desired ingredient or attribute." Lawrence Abbott.
"Quality refers to the quantity of the unappreciated attribute contained in each unit of the appreciated attribute." Keith B. Leffler.
But these definitions, despite being an accurate approximation, sometimes fail. For example, the quality of certain products depends on different tastes. In addition, there may be high quality products, but very different from each other. The definitions that respond to these failures and are based on the product.
User-based definitions
They start from the idea that quality must be defined from the user's point of view. These definitions recognize that individual shoppers have different tastes, and they also assume that the products that best meet their needs are those that they consider to be higher quality products. This makes quality a highly subjective characteristic.
In Marketing it is said that certain combinations of the attributes of a product lead to the highest satisfaction of a specific customer and that quality means meeting standards and getting it right the first time. Which corresponds to the production-based definitions.
In the field of economics, it is considered that quality differences can be interpreted as shifts in the product demand curve.
Regarding a product, on the other hand, we speak of “fitness for use”.
Example of user-based definitions:
"Quality is fitness for use." JMJuran.
"Total quality is leadership of the brand in its results by satisfying customer requirements by doing what needs to be done right the first time." Westinghouse.
« Quality is meeting customer expectations. The Quality Improvement Process is a set of principles, policies, support structures and practices aimed at continually improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our lifestyle. AT & T.
"Customer satisfaction is achieved by selling goods that are not returned to a customer who does." Stanley Marcus.
But the above approaches have two problems:
1. How to add individual preferences?
This problem is usually solved by assuming that high-quality products satisfy the needs of the majority of consumers, but this approach does not take into account the difference in weight that each individual gives to quality characteristics and the difficulty of achieving a statistical model without bias when aggregating preferences.
2. How to distinguish those product attributes that add quality to the product from those that simply maximize customer satisfaction?
Production-based definitions
They are based on supply. Virtually all identify quality with meeting specifications. Tolerances are determined, and deviations from them are considered quality decreases.
The same conception also applies to services. In this case, the requirements are the adaptation to each client and compliance with the scheduled schedules.
These types of definitions focus on the internal process of the product and do not pay due attention to customer perceptions.
Production-based definitions example:
"Quality (means) conformance to requirements" Philip B. Crosby.
"Quality is the extent to which a specific product conforms to a design or specification." Harold L. Gilmore.
Value-based definitions
They define quality in terms of costs and prices, that is, a quality product is one that satisfies certain needs at a reasonable price.
That is, if the user requests a very cheap car and easy to park in the city, the model that meets the conditions at a better price will be the one with the best quality. This concept is increasingly important, various studies show it, but it is difficult to apply in practice.
Example of value-based definitions:
"Quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost." Robert A. Broh.
“Quality means the best for certain customer conditions. These conditions are: (a) current use; (b) the sale price of the product '. Armand V. Feigenbaum
The dictionary definition is that the term quality is defined as: “the perception that the customer has of a product or service. Set of properties inherent to an object that allow it to be appreciated as equal, better or worse than other objects of its kind ”.
Quality definitions according to UNE-EN ISO 9000: 2000
The definition of quality offered by UNE-EN ISO 9000: 20002 is very general, as it tries to answer all possible questions, in all possible fields. Is the next:
Quality: Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics meets the requirements.
UNE-EN ISO 9000: 2000 Section 3.1.1.
The requirements referred to in the standard are:
The needs or expectations established or the implicit or obligatory ones.
To better understand this definition
In the case of a carpenter. The customer comes to him, and asks him to make a table for him. The customer will confidently define a set of table characteristics.
For example, it will indicate how it should be, if you want it to be oval, round, square or rectangular… in case it is rectangular, it will indicate the width and length of the table, how high it should be…. all this series of characteristics, are the established needs.
But there is a whole set of implicit needs that also define whether the table is going to meet your needs or not. For example, the client is probably not going to mention it specifically, but he is totally sure that he would like the table not to be lame; that it breaks when you put weight on the table and that you want the paint or varnish not to spoil over time.
Customers cannot specify the full and exact list of characteristics that the product or service they are requesting must meet. You have to "guess" all the characteristics that the client wants and that influence the quality that they will perceive in said product or service. In addition, depending on the product or service in question, the identification of these characteristics will be more or less complicated. These needs coincide with those referred to in the definitions based on manufacturing, since when the client requests an axle for a bicycle, he wants it to serve him and for that it has to have certain measurements, be made with a specific alloy that makes it resistant enough so as not to break.
Taking into account the analysis of the previous definitions of quality, it is considered appropriate to adopt the following definition:
Quality is the ability or aptitude of a product (service), determined by its characteristics, to satisfy the wishes and / or needs of a customer at a specific time or period.
When talking about the satisfaction of desires, reference is made to the requirements expressed by the client and in the case of needs those that the client does not clearly express and that sometimes he is not able to identify, but that he does perceive their presence. or absence (it is known what it is, but cannot be defined).
Clients can be considered as the parties involved in the process, we usually speak of internal clients (mainly workers) and external clients (consumers).
The quality refers to a specific moment, what yesterday was considered of high quality, today could be considered of lower quality, although there are works whose quality is imperishable in time.
Bibliography
- Crosby P. Quality is free, Mc Graw Hill, USA, 1979. González C. General concepts of total quality. Available at www.monografias.com. Deming WE "Quality, productivity and competitive position". Cambridge University, USA 1982. Feigenbaun AV "Total Quality Control", Fourth Edition. Mc Graw Hill, USA 1990.ISO 9001: 2000. Quality Management System - Requirements. Juran JM “Quality Control Manual”. Fourth Edition, Mc Graw Hill, Interamericana de España SA, Spain, 1993
