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Unit 5: Quality Management

requires commitment to forging long-term relationships that create synergies of knowledge, Notes
security, and adaptability for both parties.
This is true from the quality concept point of view because quality is defined as what the
customer wants. As different customers have different perceptions, quality means different
things to different people—it has many dimensions. Customers often evaluate quality citing the
attributes of the product or its product delivery process. These are attributes of quality, i.e., the
traits associated with quality that can be identified.

Did u know? Quality is the perception of the customer of the degree to which the product
meets expectations.
Quality attributes of customers can also be divided into two categories:
1. Hard Attributes: These are those attributes that must be met by the delivered product or
service if it is to be considered satisfactory. There are objective measures to these attributes,
e.g., size, colour, weight, cost, reliability, etc. and…

2. Soft Attributes: These are those attributes that are desirable and have no hard measures.
These attributes are based on the ‘sense’.

Example: Jet Airways ‘approachable, warm and friendly staff’, ‘being treated as an
individual’.

Sometimes, it may be the type and reputation of company one is doing business with.
Attributes, however, are not the same as quality. Identifying every attribute of quality for a
product would not, perhaps, describe that product’s quality level.

5.1.4 Design Quality and Conformance Quality

Though quality has many dimensions, two terms are commonly used in this context:

Design quality is the inherent quality of the product or service in the marketplace.
Conformance quality refers to the degree to which the product or service design specifications
are met.
Freedom from deficiencies refers to the quality of conformance. Increasing the quality of
conformance usually results in lower costs, fewer complaints and increased customer satisfaction.
Both the quality of design and the quality of conformance should provide products that meet the
customer’s objectives for those products.
Design quality and conformance quality differ in that design quality is proactive, while
conformance quality is reactive. Philip Crosby, the quality guru, believes that ensuring quality
should occur primarily at the design phase, i.e., it should be proactive rather than reactive.
Rather than spending time and money on finding and fixing mistakes and errors, Crosby
advocates doing a job right at the first time. Crosby challenges organizations to think of how
processes can be designed or redesigned to reduce errors and defects to reach a goal of “zero
defects”. Crosby coined the phrase “quality is free”, meaning that the absence or lack of quality
is costly to an organization.

Some dimensions of quality, with description, are given in Table below along with the measures
of conformance quality both for a manufactured product and a service.

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