This document defines and discusses various aspects of quality including:
1) Quality is defined as fitness for use and meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
2) Quality control focuses on testing products for defects while quality assurance aims to improve processes to prevent defects.
3) Quality assurance systematically monitors all factors of a project to maximize meeting minimum quality standards.
2. Quality
Definitions of Quality :-
1- Quality is fitness for use:
*Quality means the product or service does what it is intended to do.
*Poor quality of a product or service cost users if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do.
2- Quality is meeting customer expectations:
*Quality is satisfying the customer.
*The customer defines quality.
*The customer perceives the quality of a product or service.
3- Quality is exceeding the customer expectations.
*Quality is the extent to which the customers or users believe the product or service surpasses their needs and
expectations.
*Quality is delighting the customer.
4- Quality is superiority to competitors:
*Quality is how a company’s products and services compare to those of competitors or how they compare to
those offered by the company in the past.
3.
4. The business meanings of quality have developed over
time. Various interpretations are given below:
1. ISO 9000: "Degree to which a set of inherent
characteristics fulfills requirements.”
2. Six Sigma: "Number of defects per million
opportunities."
3. Subir Chowdhury: "Quality combines people
power and process power."
4. Robert Pirsig: "The result of care."
5. • 5.Peter Drucker: "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."
• 6.Gerald M. Weinberg: "Value to some person".
• 7.Philip B. Crosby: "Conformance to requirements."
The requirements may not fully represent customer
expectations; Crosby treats this as a separate problem.
6. Quality control
Quality control is a process by which entities review
the quality of all factors involved in production. This
approach places an emphasis on three aspects:
• Elements such as controls, job management, defined
and well managed processes, performance and
integrity criteria, and identification of records.
• Competence, such as knowledge, skills, experience,
and qualifications.
• Soft elements, such as personnel integrity,
confidence, organizational culture, motivation, team
spirit, and quality relationships.
7. The quality of the outputs is at risk if any of
these three aspects is deficient in any way.
Quality control emphasizes testing of products
to uncover defects, and reporting to management
who make the decision to allow or deny the
release, whereas quality assurance attempts to
improve and stabilize production, and associated
processes, to avoid, or at least minimize, issues
that led to the defects in the first place. For
contract work, particularly work awarded by
government agencies, quality control issues are
among the top reasons for not renewing a
contract.
8. Quality Assurance
• Quality assurance, or QA (in use from 1973) for
short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of
the various aspects of a project, service or facility to
maximize the probability that minimum standards of
quality are being attained by the production process.
QA cannot absolutely guarantee the production of
quality products.
9. • Two principles included in QA are: "Fit for purpose"
- the product should be suitable for the intended
purpose; and "Right first time" - mistakes should be
eliminated. QA includes regulation of the quality of
raw materials, assemblies, products and components,
services related to production, and management,
production and inspection processes.
• Quality is determined by the product users, clients or
customers, not by society in general. It is not the
same as 'expensive' or 'high quality'. Low priced
products can be considered as having high quality if
the product users determine them as such.
11. Dimensions of Quality Circle Details
A quality circle is a participatory management
technique that enlists the help of employees in
solving problems related to their own jobs.
Quality circles provided a means by which
production workers were encouraged to participate
in company matters and by which management
could benefit from production workers' intimate
knowledge of the production process.