Quality (business)

In business, engineering and manufacturing, quality has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something; it's also defined as fitness for purpose. Quality is a perceptual, conditional, and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly.

Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is , maintainable, or sustainable. A quality item (an item that has quality) has the ability to perform satisfactorily in service and is suitable for its intended purpose.

There are five aspects of quality in a business context:

Quality applied in these forms was mainly developed by the procurement directorates of NASA, the military and nuclear industries from the 1960s and this is why so much emphasis was placed on Quality Assurance. The original versions of Quality Management System Standards (eventually merged to ISO 9001) were designed to contract manufacturers to produce better products, consistently and were focused on Producing, Checking and Quality Control.

The subsequent move of the Quality sector towards management systems can be clearly seen by the aggregation of the product quality requirements into one eighth of the current version of ISO 9001. This increased focus on Quality Management has promoted a general perception that quality is about procedures and documentation. Similar experiences can be seen in the areas of Safety Management Systems and Environmental Management Systems.

The emergence of tools like Asset Optimization and 6 sigma is an interesting development in the application of quality principles in business.

Managing quality is fundamental to any activity and having a clear understanding of the five aspects, measuring performance and taking action to improve is essential to an organizations survival and growth.

The common element of the business definitions is that the quality of a product or service refers to the perception of the degree to which the product or service meets the customer's expectations. Quality has no specific meaning unless related to a specific function and/or object.

The business meanings of quality have developed over time. Various interpretations are given below:

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