Primilis Ltd

Date: 27/04/09

Quality insights – what do we mean by 'quality'?

Good quality improves business performance; bad quality damages it and is costly in so many ways. In his new regular series for Cambridge Network, starting today, business and product quality consultant Tom Gaskell gives some insights into improving a company’s quality performance in a low-cost, low-bureaucracy way...

I thought it might be useful to start by defining our terms. What exactly is “quality”?

I was talking recently with some business people about this subject. They had - for genuine reasons - fallen into the trap of believing that quality is some sort of absolute measure of performance or goodness: in their view a new Ferrari or Rolls-Royce is a high quality car whereas an old, past-its-best, second-hand Fiesta is not. Lavishly appointed business park offices constitute good quality accommodation, but older well-used premises in an unfashionable industrial area do not. That sort of thing.

Although some people may agree with this traditional definition of quality, I think you’ll find that it’s increasingly outdated and unhelpful.

If we look at the writings of gurus such as W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Phillip Crosby, we get a very different story: Quality is fitness for purpose, it is meeting the exact requirements (of the customer for the product or service or process), it is a product or service or process that does exactly what you say it will, in other words, 100% meeting its requirement's specifications.

Even ISO 9000:2000, which some people mistakenly believe is over-complex and over-bureaucratic, defines quality very simply as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils the requirements”.

So the Ferrari or Roller is a high quality car if you are taking Keira Knightley to a West-End Premiere but an N-reg Fiesta would be much more suitable for a college student's weekly shopping trip. Prestigious business park offices would make impressive headquarters for a well-funded high-tech organisation but the less salubrious industrial premises would be better for a small start-up that offered welding and engineering repair services.

Quality is about meeting requirements, exactly and in full. It isn't about providing more and more features, or complexity, or performance, or 'goodness' that increases cost, takes longer to provide or makes it more difficult to use, and may not be required or expected by the customer.

A good quality product or service or business process, in the words of Ronseal, "does exactly what it says on the tin".

Of course, this puts a very strong onus on knowing exactly what the customer or end user really needs (which is not always the same as what they ask for), defining the product or service requirements specification to exactly match these needs, and then accurately meeting the requirements specifications. This must be done without shortcomings or 'creeping featurism' (where the designers decide to add more features or performance because they think it will improve the end result) or inefficiency or bureaucracy.

Working in a ‘quality way’ and developing a ‘quality product’ can save you time, money, and effort by keeping things simple and consistent, by not wasting money or development time, by doing the work correctly once rather than badly several times, by continually learning from your mistakes and improving the way you work, and by delighting your customers.

That’s what this Cambridge Network series is all about.

27 April 2009

Tom Gaskell offers business quality, product quality and reliability, and manufacturing management services through the consultancy Primilis Ltd. Contact him at http://www.primilis.com/contact_us.html or visit the website at http://www.primilis.com.

See also:
Organisation: Primilis Ltd
News article: Quality insights – Zero Defects
News article: Quality insights – quality is a strategic issue

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