It cannot be defined in the abstract although many have attempted it. There are multiple ‘official’ definitions that have been published by a variety of both national and international professional bodies and their respective gurus connected with these bodies.
Such definitions find favour for a while until they are superseded by yet another ‘definition’ which is bound to suffer the same fate. The reason for this is the word is both a noun and an adjective but never a verb. You cannot ‘quality’ something.
To have any meaning or relevance it must be put into some sort of context and it is always comparative. For example, if one were to say that an entertainment performance was a ‘quality’ performance, the opinion would be in comparison with other performances in the experience of the opinion holder. However, it is only an opinion and unless it was the consequence of voting or something similar, it is likely that others might have a different opinion. However, this could be due either to differing degrees of experience, or differing preferences and reasons for them. This is true for all products or services and therefore there is such a wide variety of competing goods and services in the marketplace. Frequently these differences result from erroneous perceptions of customer needs. Customers generally have both stated needs and unstated needs. In many cases, the stated needs are obvious. ‘I need a taxi to take me to the station’. The expectation is that a cab will arrive on time, the journey will be via as direct a route as possible, the fare reasonable, the driver polite and the cab clean. However, there may also be unstated decision-making criteria that could vary from customer to customer, how the baggage is treated and stored, the age of the vehicle, a talkative or silent driver etc. Depending upon the customer’s perception of the importance of these unstated judgment criteria will depend upon whether the customer chooses that source of supply in the future or maybe an alternative. In a competitive market, most suppliers will meet the stated requirements which are usually either written into a contract or are obvious to everyone. It is often the unstated requirements that determine the winners and losers.
It can be seen therefore that ‘quality’ whilst undefinable, is nevertheless the term used to distinguish good from bad and to distinguish the good from the ‘best’. Everyone would like to be the best, but the question is ‘how’. This leads into the so-called Quality related sciences and disciplines. These are both many and varied. For historical reasons, people in ‘The West’ associate them with manufacturing industry but this is a dangerous and highly flawed misperception. The fact is that not only do they apply equally to all business and work-based organisations but to every individual as well.
Contrary to popular western belief, ‘Quality’ is not the responsibility of a separate department called the ‘Quality Department’. Japanese companies surprisingly do not have ‘Quality’ departments. The reason is simple, they realise that ‘quality is everybody’s responsibility. Quality control does not hold the pen of the designer, turn the handles on machines, answer the phone in the Sales Department, deal with credit control and late payments etc. If those people do not really care, if they just do their jobs according to instructions then no amount of so-called Quality Control will make any difference.
A ‘Quality’ organisation is one in which everyone from the bottom to the top is working towards making that organisation the best in its business. To do this, the top management team must have a clear vision of where it wants to be. It must deploy that vision down to all employees and take account of all of their functional and personal visions as well. They must also educate and train all employees in a project by project improvement process so that each day they are looking for opportunities to make that day’s performance better than the last.
This is the meaning of ‘Quality’. When properly understood it can be the most inspiring word in an organisation. We know of nobody who is working for a living in a healthy company going to work and saying ‘what can I screw up today!’. Everybody is for Quality, nobody is against ‘quality’.
David Hutchins, Principal of DHI, Tutor and Consultant
Author of 9 best selling books on quality-related topics including, Quality Beyond Borders, Quality Circles, Hoshin Kanri, TQM and Just in Time.
