Definitions

Quality terms

Introduction
What is TQM?
A comprehensive, organization-wide effort to improve the quality
of products and services; applicable to all organizations.
What is quality?
Dictionary has many definitions: Essential characteristic,
Superior, etc.
Some definitions that have gained wide acceptance in various
organizations: Quality is customer satisfaction, Quality is
Fitness for Use.

Introduction
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the
American Society for Quality (ASQ) define quality as:

The totality of features and characteristics of a product or

service that bears on its ability to satisfy given needs.

Introduction
Definition from the ISO 9000: 2008 standards
The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill
requirements.
Degree means that quality can be used with an adjectives such as
poor, good and excellent.
Characteristics can be qualitative or quantitative.
Requirement is a need or expectation that is stated, generally
implied by the organization, its customers, and other
stakeholders; or it may be obligatory.
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Introduction
What is a customer?
Anyone who is impacted by the product or process delivered by
an organization.
External customer: The end user as well as intermediate
processors. Other external customers may not be purchasers
but may have some connection with the product.
Internal customer: Other divisions of the company that receive
the processed product.
What is a product?
The output of the process carried out by the organization. It may
be goods (e.g. automobiles, missile), software (e.g. a computer
code, a report) or service (e.g. banking, insurance)
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Discussion question
Students in an educational institute

Are they internal customers or external customers?

Introduction
How is customer satisfaction achieved?
Two basic dimensions: Product features and Freedom from
deficiencies.
One additional component: Performance
Product features Refers to quality of design.
Examples in manufacturing industry: Performance, Reliability,
Durability, Ease of use, Esthetics etc.
Examples in service industry: Accuracy, Timeliness, Friendliness
and courtesy, Knowledge of server etc.
Quality of design studies begins with consumer research, service
call analysis, sales call analysis and leads to determination of a
product concept that meets customers needs.
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Introduction
Freedom from deficiencies Refers to quality of conformance.
Quality of conformance is the extent to which a firm and its
suppliers can produce products with a predictable degree of
uniformity and dependability.
Once the nominal value and specification limits are determined
via a quality of design study, the organization must
continuously strive to not only meet but surpass those
specifications.
Higher conformance means fewer complaints and increased
customer satisfaction.

Introduction
Higher performance Refers to quality of performance.
Quality of performance focus on determining how the quality
characteristics indentified in the quality of design studies and
improved and innovated in quality of conformance studies, are
performing in the marketplace.
Major tools of quality of performance studies are consumer
research, sales call analysis, maintenance, reliability and
logistics support and to determine why consumers do not
purchase the companys products.

Introduction
Relationship between quality and cost
Consumers can be grouped into market segments once the
product characteristics (features) they desire are known and
defined.
Features and price determine whether a consumer will initially
enter a market segment hence features and prices determine
the market size.
After the initial purchase, consumers decisions to extol a
product or purchase it again are based on their experience with
the product that is, products uniformity and dependability.
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Introduction
Relationship between quality and cost
Uniformity and dependability, thus, determine a products
success, and so, its market share, within the market segment.
So features, dependability and uniformity and price are the
most important parameters on which customer judges the
organization.

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Why Quality?
Reasons for quality becoming a cardinal priority for most
organizations:
Competition Todays market demand high quality products
at low cost. Having `high quality reputation is not enough!
Internal cost of maintaining the reputation should be less.
Changing customer The new customer is not only
commanding priority based on volume but is more demanding
about the quality system.
Changing product mix The shift from low volume, high
price to high volume, low price have resulted in a need to
reduce the internal cost of poor quality.
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Why Quality?
Product complexity As systems have become more complex,
the reliability requirements for suppliers of components have
become more stringent.
Higher levels of customer satisfaction Higher customers
expectations are getting spawned by increasing competition.
Quality improves productivity If we want to increase profit,
why not raise productivity?
Relatively simpler approaches to quality viz. product inspection
for quality control and incorporation of internal cost of poor
quality into the selling price, might not work for todays
complex market environment.
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Quality perspectives
Everyone defines Quality based on their own perspective of it.
Typical responses about the definition of quality would
include:
1. Perfection
2. Consistency
3. Eliminating waste
4. Speed of delivery
5. Compliance with policies and procedures
6. Doing it right the first time
7. Delighting or pleasing customers
8. Total customer satisfaction and service
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Quality perspectives
Judgmental perspective
goodness of a product.
Shewharts transcendental definition of quality absolute and
universally recognizable, a mark of uncompromising standards
and high achievement.
Examples of products attributing to this image: Rolex watches,
Lexus cars.
Product-based perspective
function of a specific, measurable variable and that
differences in quality reflect differences in quantity of some
product attributes.
Example: Quality and price perceived relationship.
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Quality perspectives
User-based perspective
fitness for intended use.
Individuals have different needs and wants, and hence
different quality standards.
Example Nissan offering dud models in US markets under
the brand name Datson which the US customer didnt prefer.
Value-based perspective
quality product is the one that is as useful as competing
products and is sold at a lesser price.
US auto market Incentives offered by the Big Three are
perceived to be compensation for lower quality.
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Quality perspectives
Manufacturing-based perspective
the desirable outcome of a engineering and manufacturing
practice, or conformance to specification.
Engineering specifications are the key!
Example: Coca-cola quality is about manufacturing a
product that people can depend on every time they reach for
it.

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Quality perspectives

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In-class exercise
Look at the handouts on various consumer
advertisements and comment.

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Quality levels
At organizational level, we need to ask following questions:
Which products and services meet your expectations?
Which products and services you need that you are not
currently receiving?
At process level, we need to ask:
What products and services are most important to the
customer?
What processes produce those products and services?
What are the key inputs to those processes?
Which processes have most significant effects on the
organizations performance standards?
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Quality levels
At the individual job level, we should ask:
What is required by the customer?
How can the requirements be measured?
What is the specific standard for each measure?

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Designing for Quality

1.
2.

Quality is a virtue of design.

Consumer satisfaction results from
Quality in design.
Quality of conformance to design.
Quality design begins with minimizing loss.
Taguchi defines quality as the loss imparted to society once a
product is delivered.
The aim of good design is to minimize loss once the
customer takes delivery of the product.
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Designing for Quality

Quality theft according to Taguchi:
Manufacturers sometime try and maintain price levels by
surreptitiously reducing the product specifications.
If the thief steals 10,000 yen, the victim losses 10,000 yen so
there is neither gain nor loss to the whole society.
But when, say, the mid value is reduced, the manufacturer
imparts a larger loss, say a 20,000 yen loss to a customer in
order to make a 10,000 yen profit.
Example Reducing the thickness of the armor plating on a
battleship by 0.01 mm may save the manufacturer thousands
of rupees; for the cost of the lives of crew, and the ship itself?
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Attributes of a good design

1.
2.
3.

A good design reflects an optimal trade-off between cost and

performance. A good design is the one which is:
Cheap;
Operates well over a large range;
Is compatible with related products.
Simplification makes the product cheap because then the
product requires fewer suppliers, less administration and
fewer supplier-related problems. It reduces production time
and increases robustness.
Robust products are easier to manufacture.
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Designing for Quality

Signal-to-noise ratio quality of design may be measured as
the S/N ratio.
Signal is what the product or a sub-component is intended to
deliver. Noise is what impairs delivery.
Robustness is defined as a product feature of high S/N ratio.
Speeding up the design process understand that some
processes can be speeded whereas some simply cant.
Design process has two phase Concept design and R&D (for
new material, processes etc.)
Which of the phases can be speeded up?
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Designing for Quality

Typically, R&D time can be reduced by concurrent planning
(product and process specifications can be developed
simultaneously).
Aim for `loose tolerances tightly enforced, rather than `tight
tolerances loosely enforced.

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