LEADERS IN QUALITY REVOLUTION AND DEFINING FOR QUALITY:User-Based

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Total Quality Management MGT510

Lesson # 07

LEADERS IN QUALITY REVOLUTION AND DEFINING FOR QUALITY

The Concept AND Definition of Quality

While managers have shown interest in the concept of quality, many have been frustrated by its

elusiveness. They find diverse and often conflicting definitions in professional books, journals, and

news media. Despite common themes such as continuous improvement, customer focus, and excellence,

different people emphasize different things. For example, in a 1991 public television special, "Quality

or Else," executives, managers, workers, academics, and others defined quality variously as follows:

A pragmatics system of continual improvement, a way to successfully organize man and

machines.

The meaning of excellence

The unyielding and continuing effort by everyone in an organization to understand, meet, and

exceed the needs of its customers

The best product that you can produce with the materials that you have to work with

Continuous good product which a customer can trust.

Producing a product or service that meets the needs or expectations of the customers.

Not only satisfying customers, but delighting them, innovating, creating.

Your own sample of definitions would probably reveal similar variety. Different companies, and

different people within the same company, often disagree on the definition of quality. Sometimes the

disagreement is merely due to semantics. Sometimes they are the result of focusing on different

dimensions of quality. Other times the differences are more profound, implying conflicting courses of

action and approaches to management. Here we look at several views of quality and then offer a

definition that should help to integrate managerial efforts to improve quality throughout an organization.

The Transcendent View of Quality

The concept of quality has often been defined, from a transcendent view, as "innate excellence". This

view implies that high quality is something timeless and enduring, an essence that transcends or rises

above individual tastes or styles. It often regards quality as an un-analyzable property that people learn

to recognize through experience, just as Plato argued that beauty can be understood only after exposure

to a series of objects that display its characteristics.

A Critique of the Transcendent View of Quality

Walter A. Shewhart, the father of modern-day statistical quality control, offered the following criticism

of the transcendent view of quality:

Dating at least from the time of Aristotle, there has been some tendency to conceive of quality as

indicating the goodness of an object. The majority of advertisers appeal t the public upon the basis of

the quality of product. In so doing, they implicitly assume that there is a measure of goodness which can

be applied to all kinds of product, whether it be vacuum tubes, sewing machines automobiles.

The transcendent view of quality essentially tells a manager "you will know it when you see it" and

does not inform managers how to pursue excellence. Certainly the notion of excellence is an important

and inspirational component of quality. However, future managers must have a better understanding of

the concept. The definition of quality must be more pragmatic, more objective, and more tangible. It

must inform managers about how to make improvements.

To better understand how this total views of quality impacts managerial practices, it is useful to

understand how managerial approaches to quality have evolved from a narrow view, focused on

Total Quality Management MGT510

inspection and conformance to specified standards, toward a broader view, focused on organizational

strategy for providing superior customer value. We now discuss the evolution of quality approaches.

Product-Based

Shewhart explains that the word "quality," in Latin, qualities, comes from quails, meaning "How

constituted" and signifies a thing's basic nature. Emphasizing a product-based view of quality, Shewhart

argued that the quality of a manufactured product may be described in terms of a set of characteristics.

Product-based definitions of quality suit engineers because they are concerned with translating product

requirements into specific components and physical dimensions that can be produced. For example,

measurement of capacity, inductance, and resistance may be used to define the quality of a relay. So,

according to this view, quality is a precise and measurable variable: differences in quality reflect

differences in the quantity of an attribute the product possess (Garvin, 1988). For example, high-quality

rugs have a large number of knots per square inch. Quality in a rug can be seen as an inherent

characteristic that can be assessed objectively. Since quality reflects the quantity of attributes contained

by a product, and because attributes are costly to produce, high quality means higher cost. In this view, a

Cadillac loaded with a number of amenities is a higher-quality car than a stripped-down Chevrolet.

The product-based view has some merit, but it does not accommodate differences in individual tastes

and preferences.

Manufacturing-Based

Another meaning of the word "quality" is "the degree of excellence that a thing possess" once it is

manufactured. The manufacturing-based view of quality focuses on manufacturing and engineering

practices, emphasizes conformance to specified requirements, and relies on statistical analysis to

measure quality. As you will see, it contradicts the notion that higher quality necessarily corresponds to

higher cost. Returning to the example of a relay, Shewhart suggests the overall quality of a relay can be

further expressed in terms of whether it meets engineering specifications for product-based

characteristics (qualities), such as capacity, inductance, and resistance. To simplify, let's just consider

two dimensions, resistance and inductance.

The quality or degree of excellence of a product (represented by a point or a set of two measurements)

falling within the rectangular region would be characterized as good or satisfactory. A product with

quality outside the region, not conforming to satisfactions, would be characterized as bad or

unsatisfactory. Of course, real manufacturing processes produce a stream of products. Ideally, each

individual product has quality that conforms to specification. However, variation in the production

process may produce some products that are outside the specifications.

Shewhart suggested that the fraction of nonconforming items produced by a manufacturing process can

be studied statistically to assess quality. The knowledge gained from statistical studies can be used to

improve the control of quality, thus ensuring that a larger fraction of the products conform to

specification. By stabilizing and reducing variation in the process, managers can ensure that product

quality is always within specification. Such improvement would mean fewer defects, les scrap, less

rework, and consequently, less cost.

User-Based

The user-based perspective does not abandon manufacturing quality as a strategic objective, but

provides a context for it. As Shewhart says, "The broader concept of economic control naturally

includes the problem of continually shifting the standards expressed in terms of measurable physical

properties to meet best the shifting economic value of these particular physical characteristics depending

upon shifting human wants". The user-based view of quality, popular with people in marketing,

presumes that quality rests in "the eye o the beholder," the user of the product, rather than an engineer's

specified standards.

Total Quality Management MGT510

The Concept of Customer Value

Value-based approaches expand on the user-based view f quality by incorporating the notion of "price

of costs." Regarding value-based approaches, Garvin (1988) suggests "a quality product is one that

provides performance or conformance at an acceptable price or cost. By this reasoning, a $ 500 running

shoe, no matter how well-constructed, could not be a quality product, for it would find few buyers." In

support of this view, researchers have demonstrated a positive relationship between market share and

value-based measures of quality. Other examples contradict this value-based approach which assumes

that lower cost always means higher value to the customer. Designer dresses that sell for $5,000, or

luxury cars that cost more than a home, suggest that there is another dimension of value. The definition

of customer value offered below expands on this value-based definition of quality. In fact, the customer

value concept encompasses all of the foregoing definitions of quality.

Quality improvement for customer value

Customer

Quality of

Purpose:

design/redesign

performance

customer

value

Quality of

Design

Product

conformance

Apply Quality improvement

Process throughout

We define customer value as a combination of benefits and sacrifices occurring when a customer uses a

product or service to meet certain needs. Those consequences that contribute to meeting one's needs are

benefits, while those consequences that detract from meeting one's needs are sacrifices.

For example, a person who purchases a large luxury car to satisfy a need for pleasurable travel might

enjoy such benefits as comfort, restfulness, and audio entertainment. On the other hand, the person also

has to make certain sacrifices, such as paying for the vehicle, difficulties in parking a large vehicle, and

fuel and maintenance costs these sacrifices detract from meeting customer needs. For example, if the car

owner lives in a town that doesn't have a dealership for the luxury car, he or she will incur costs such as

frustration, time, and the inconvenience of going to another town for service.

The concept of customer value encompasses the benefits and sacrifices associated with the customer's

use process throughout the life cycle of product ownership. As Deming (1986) suggests: "Quality must

be measured by the interaction between three participants: "Quality must be measured by the interaction

between three participants: (1) the product itself; (2) the user and how he uses the product, how he

Total Quality Management MGT510

installs it, how he takes care of it; and (3) instructions for use, training of customer and training of

repairman, service provided for repairs, and availability of parts."

The concept of customer value also encompasses all the definitions of quality mentioned so far. To

provide value to customers, managers must ensure the following:

1. Quality of Design/Redesign

Product designs conform to customer needs (product-based and user-based quality). For

example, automobile producers design car seat to conform to the contours of the diver's back.

2. Quality of Conformance:

Product manufactured conforms to product designs (manufacturing-based quality). For

example, each car seat produced meets the targeted design specifications.

3. Quality of Performance:

Products manufactured conform to customer needs by performing in the field (user-based

quality). For example, the car seats maintain their shape after years of use.

All of these dimensions of quality should be managed through a quality improvement process that

enhances customer value. Placing quality in the broader context of customer value counteracts the

tendency of people with different functional orientations within an organization t take different views of

quality (Garvin, 1988). For example, marketing people tend to have a user-based and product-based

view that focuses on matching product characteristics with customer perceptions. Engineers, on the

other hand, tend to take a product-based view that focuses on defining product characteristics.

Manufacturing people tend to view quality as conformance to specification and targets.

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