What is quality 6

[25362]

Although quality is easy to talk about in generalities, it's difficult to define in specifics.

It was Aristotle who said: "Quality is not an act. It is a habit."

Think for a minute what quality, or the lack of it, means to you, objectively as well as subjectively, and let us learn from your opinions.

 

[MintJulep]

Greg,

I was trying to do the "reduction to absuridity" thing, but was rather pressed for time. I was attempting to refute the "quality is compliance to specification" definition.

Put more simply, my point was "If I ask for crap, and you give you crap, have you provided quality?"

I did however attempt to pick individual limits that are accepted for some applications, as you note. Minor point, you missed the "perform as expected". A 24% efficient filter is good if it filters out 24% of the stuff (performs as intended), but is not good if it filters out only 12% (does not performe as intended).

 

[MintJulep]

Haggis,

You cannot inspect in quality.

Perhaps factory B needs to do 100% inspection because their processes are out of control. What is their scrap rate? Maybe they only produce 1 perfect widget for every 99 thrown away.

Factory A might have excellently controlled processes, and has determined that a 10% random inspection level is sufficient to identify that their processes have strayed. They could produce 1000 widgets, inspect 100 and find only one defect.

Factory A has much better quality (or at least quality control) than factory B.

In your example you incorrectly assume that there is a relationship between inspection frequency and both the minimum standard of "it's good" and the ability to ship a good product. Neither relationship exists.

 

[IRstuff]

BJC,

I was simply pointing out that given two identical processes with 10% sampling and 100% sampling; post-production testing would only catch infant-failures. The long-term failure rate would essentially be the same and therefore, even with 10 times the testing, the net quality is the same.

Quality CANNOT be assured by testing. Testing is expensive and cannot catch life failures. It must be done by design and process.

TTFN

 

[EddyC]

To me, a quality product is one that performs better than its competitors and suffers fewer defects. I think that this is the general view of the public.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think the public would view quality as "it works when I need it to work".

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[25362]

It might be of value to those involved in quality control to have a look at the "loss function, orthogonal experiments, parameter and tolerance design" introduced by the japanese as explained in Taguchi Techniques for Quality Engineering" by Phillip J. Ross (McGraw-Hill). ISBN 0-07-053866-2.

 

[haggis]

Everybody including myself seemed to have gone off on a tangent. The answer to the question What is Quality? is as I said, "An inherent or distinguishing characteristic; a property."

This can be poor, fair, good, or excelent. What most of the posts, while making sense, are lacking is, the use of one of these abjectives preceeding the word quality.

Every product as a whole or component thereof has quality.

Haggis

 

[IRstuff]

From an MSNBC article about the safety failures at NASA:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6872105/page/3/

A good place to start is with the words of Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy and founder of a safety culture with a remarkable record.

“Quality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation,” he wrote. “What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromising insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen -- and forestalled -- before it happens.”

TTFN

 

[jsummerfield]

Let me bring us back to the idea that quality is conformance with the requirements. My son is a recent EE grad now attending graduate school. Two years ago when I was on an offshore platform in Mexico I asked via email what he wanted for Christmas. His response was a rugged reliable watch.

I did not buy him a Rolex; I bought him a Casio model that I found on the Internet. The Casio that I selected was the G-Shock series, water resistant to 200 m, solar powered with internal battery, receives the 60 kHz time signal. The G-Shock is rugged. My son is a certified SCUBA diver although he has not dived in a while. He also participates in the martial arts. I doubt that he wears his watch when practicing but he can. He should not worry about changing the battery for about seven years. A month later I also bought one for myself as a birthday gift. I get what I want if I buy it myself.

A Rolex is a QUALITY watch. I see them on the yacht skippers who participate in serious regatas. However, besides my unwillingnes to spend that much for my son's present, I do not think that they typically meet his requirement for ruggedness. The Casio meets my son's requirements. It is a quality watch.

John

 

[ewh]

Rolex is a high quality watch.

 

[BJC]

A Sponge Bob watch from Burger King is a high quality watch as well.

 

[IRstuff]

As the last few posts point out, there are subtle, yet really distinct forms of quality.

One is inherent, e.g., it meets or exceeds its requirements or expectations.

The other is what is called in business "good-will." From a specification/performance standpoint, Rolex and Casio have equal quality. But, Rolex, like HP and IBM have additional good-will; a warm-and-fuzzy based on customer support, how much the salesperson pampers or strokes you, etc.

IBM is/was a good example; I had an IBM CD-drive many years that died relatively early. Called their tech support and a new one was shipped to me that day; no RMA, no fuss. That's an intangible that is not reflected in the numerical assessment of quality.

TTFN

 

[25362]

I think haggis has a point. Quality as an attribute, may mean a degree of excellence or worthiness, as most of the posts indicated, or just a trait, feature or characteristic.

It all depends on the preferred definition, which itself depends on who is asked, the manufacturers and suppliers, or the users of products and services.

Thanks for all your contributions.

 

[ewh]

BJC,
I guess I just have a problem accepting that anything manufactured and released to the public is of high quality, just because it meets the manufacturers specifications.

 

[IRstuff]

That's yet another form of quality, e.g., how do the specifications relate to the intended or desired use. Followed by how thoroughly the product performance is verified. A product may appear to meet its requirements, works in its intended environment/application, be reliable, have great product support. Yet, it may actually not meet ALL its requirements; it may be that its requirements are grossly in excess of how it's actually used.

Somewhere in that is the degree-of-difficulty of achieving the requirement itself or achieving the level of compliance to that requirement. That's another intangible that makes one feel that a Burger King Sponge Bob is still low quality because it should be trivial for it to meet all its intended requirements and it's free.



TTFN

 

[25362]

More than once I've heard (free translation) that "advice given for nothing is worth nothing". To all participants, do you think that since the advice given through eng-tips is free, would one have to attach a "low-quality" label to all the advisory inputs because of that trait ?

 

[BJC]

ewh
If the public buys it, it meets there expectations. The manufacturer made a quality level to meet the publics expectations.
The Sponge Bob and the Rolex have equal quality, different standards.
If your buying a watch that will last the rugrats a week before it goes in the trash, the Sponge Bob watch is the item. IF your doing the solo round the world yacth race would your choose the Sponge Bob or the Rolex watch?

IRstuff
Rickover is generally credited as being the one who worte 10CFR50 appendix B. It's short but is the basis for all Nuke QA/QC progarms.

 

[IRstuff]

Not to kick a dead horse, but the Pinto would be an example where the public DID buy the car and obviously, the car had less than stellar quality, w.r.t., to expected performance in a rear-end crash.

TTFN

 

[MintJulep]

Rolex watches have a perception of being high quality. Truth be told, they keep rather lousey time. The Casio G-shock is much less likely to deviate from a calibrated reference over time.

This is not to say that Rolex does not produce quality watches, for they do. The workmanship and attention to detail is outstanding. They are reliable, and sufficiently accurate for most purposes. They are also very nice looking.

Perception is an important component of quality. But perhaps imperception is even more important. Things that simmply work, day-after-day, for years and years, yet go unnoticed by the vast majority of people are the true champions of quality.

25362,

Your last post asks us to compare quality against value. There is no relationship between the two.

A Rolex is a high quality, high value watch.

A Casio is a high quality, low value watch.

The free sponge Bob watch is a moderate quality, low value watch.

The Steinhauser watch (see thread1010-109172) is a low quality, low value watch masquerading as a high quality high value watch being represented as as a high quality exceptional bargin.

 

[BobPE]

I think quality depends on the prespective you take to look at something. As engineers, I saw all the right responses that quality has to be tied to something that can be compared to a standard specification.

Step into the publics shoes and quality seems to relate to the experience. I see a lot of Pintos still driving around, and I would believe to the owner, the car has quality as it is still running and they are not dead, even though the Pinto was not a quality product.

Step into managements shoes and quality seems to be based on performance. The Sponge Bob watches are flying off the shelves, making their assumptions about product acceptance quality assumptions. Can these watched tolerate some variation in conformance with specifications, yes, I would think so. But the net effect was a quality management job in getting product to market.

Step into the accountants shoes and quality seems to be based on investment and return. That Pinto design saved moeny on each unit produced, which to an accountant is a quality approach to building a product.

True quality is obtained when one can understand balance all these prespectives to generate somthing that allows all those involved to succeed.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer was a quality product. They had a quality marketing approach (PBR me ASAP). I wouldn't blame the consumers for the products failure, Pabst was sold off and those people that looked out for the quality of the Pabst experience were gone. Everyone involved was still delivering quality aspects of the Pabst experience, but somehow quality was no longer linked to success, and sadly, my poor PBR's are gone for ever....

BobPE