Talk:Quality (disambiguation)

Response theory
I guess I am jumping in here, but the so-called q-value or quality is a key characteristic of any physical phenomenon which is well described by a lorentzian line shape.

So I added some stuff about this in (this is the same idea behind the timbre=quality of a musical note, but a bit more explicit). $$Insert non-formatted text here$$[[Media:

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Definition
''The first meaning is technical, the second practical, the third artistic and the fourth metaphysical. All four meanings, and therefore the meaning of quality, are synonymous with good.''

Utter rubbish. I can say that a beer has an overbearing astringent quality. The word 'quality' is not synonomous with 'good' in that sentence. Hence, Wikipedia is wrong in this case.

On top of that, 'quality' doesn't even belong in something calling itself an 'encyclopedia'. It belongs in a dictionary. Obviously, the Wikipedians have put it here so that they can honestly say that Wikipedia contains quality articles (ha ha!).


 * I think it's not so bad now. Although as a whole the article needs work. It is clearly useful in the context of Quality as a focus for business, engineering, public work and a whole host of other human activities. But see the next section's suggestion ... Matt Whyndham 17:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

No doubt quality is 'subjectiuve in the sence that each person perceives it differenly; even for the same product or service. But in general quality are the features, characteristics or attributes of a product or service which make it desirable to the customer or consumer. Quality is always for and judged by the customer or consumer. The supplier or producer just has to guess, anticipate and chase; hoping to converge with the customer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by A.Nsubisi 196.46.106.84 (talk) 13:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Incorrect "in general". Your comment only relates to meaning #1. Gabriel Kielland 13:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

According to Philip Crosby, the term needs to be defined by the person / entity using the term. In his courses -- those taught at the Crosby Quality College in Florida during the 1980's and 90's -- he defined it as "Conformance to Requirements". Applied to a product, this included any applicable organizational requirements (which include those necessitated by the business plan and those of other interested parties -- e.g. the Federal Aviation Administration) as well as those of the customer. Jcwikiwiki 10:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Quality/Quality control
"Quality," the abstract concept, and "quality control" are not the same thing. Should Category:Quality be renamed to reflect this, and should this page be removed from that category? Please respond on my talk page, thanks... Paul 04:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd think the section "[Quality] in organizations" should be merged into either Quality control or Quality management. The page Quality should deal with the philosophical concept of quality. A disambiguation page should be set up to direct readers interested in the engineering concept of quality to those other pages. -- The Photon 02:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Quality exposition
Added a short paragraph on quality being both a tool of measurement and a positive term.

Design vs Mfg
''Most of these techniques and concepts are controversial to one degree or another, since there are two opposing schools of thought with regard to quality. One school subscribes to a statistical approach to quality, measuring variation and then taking corrective action. The other school subscribes to a more organic approach, arguing that one should "design in quality" rather than trying to "test in quality".''

There is a difference between quality of design and the quality of production. Six Sigma and other quality control methods use statistical methodology and sampling to determine how consistently a product is being produced and offers a methodology to correct deviations. QC methods not deal with product design. No matter how well designed an item is, if it is being manufactured poorly it will not work with a high degree of reliability. Conversely, no matter how consistently and uniformly a poor design is produced, good production methods cannot improve on a poor design. The above paragraph makes no sense and does not belong in the article. TDC 19:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The sentence is poorly written, but obviously whoever wrote it is describing Deming vs. Six Sigma. Seems as though something needs to be included along that line. Just better written. Brimba 20:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

"Costs go down and productivity goes up, as improvement of quality is accomplished by better management of design, engineering, testing and by improvement of processes. Better quality at lower price has a chance to capture a market. Cutting costs without improvement of quality is futile."

W. Edwards Deming "Quality and the Required Style of Management" 1988

Deming consistently emphasized the necessity of the quality of design, the quality of the processes used for design, and the quality of the processes that produce goods or services. The statistical methods developed by Walter Shewhart are very useful in many aspects of the design of products and services. Deming spoke often about the importance of reducing variation in the quality of goods and services. He spoke of the need to reduce variation at every stage of all processes. Reducing variation by control chart studies is a central theme in the Deming management theories. Knowledge about variation is one of the four pillars of The Deming System of Profound Knowledge.

The Deming System of Profound Knowledge http://forum.qualitygurus.com/viewtopic.php?t=21

Health Care Quality
Health Care Quality is the Quality of health prevention, treatment and management of illness and the preservation of a patient's mental and physical well-being of the services given through medical and health professionals in the industry,community and rural areas. Health Care Quality can be at highest quality to the lowest quality of health Care.

Inherent Quality (associated with software and IT)
A paper has been written for wikipedia. See http://inherentquality.com Site also includes special COBIT weblog articles... article 1 of 16 authored with expert ISACA/ITGI collaboration

Property and quality
(moved here from the top to leave the contents box prominent. Don't know the provenance of the following. Matt Whyndham 16:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Quality is the substance that makes an object/entity what it is. A quality is inherent, a property is relative. A quality is typical of the whole, a property is typical of a part.

Property is relative. Quality is absolute. An object can survive without some properties, but not without its quality.

A property is comon in all members of a class. Properties are of two kinds. Group 1 property shows the limits (contains constraints). If they disappear, the object itself disappears.

They are substantial (not substance) properties. The constraints here are not the same as the specifics of an object, though.

Group 2 properties are simple properties. They do not delimit objects. It is the quality that makes a difference among objects.

The number of qualities of an object is endless.

A particular quality may be the property of different objects, and vice versa.

A quality itself is a propetry, it is relative as any other property, i.e. it does not depend on the object that it is a quality of, but on other objects associated with that object.

Or: what is a quality for one object is a property only for another. (Example: an ability to do something – with an amateur and a professional).

A quality is not complete specifics. Therefore we have a separate sense for it (quality). If two substantial properties make up a quality, then combined, they are again a substantial property. The complete set of qualities is what you call the specifics.

see also: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Substance_theory"

Apogr 20:16, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Rob Pirsig's Quality
I'm suprised to not see more on this page about Rob Pirsig's concept of quality. The potential implications of the concept laid out in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance are fascinating at least and ground breaking at best. And since he discovered the concept through the very problem of *being unable to define quality* in the first place, its greater relevence to this page is even more apparent.

Does anyone agree with me here or am I way off track? Mythiran 03:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

OK - I've been a QA professional for over 20 years, so I guess I'm qualified to speak on the subject. Quality can be defined, and is quite thoroughly and in exacting detail millions of time per day. As far as Quality goes in an engineering, manufacturing, and business sense, Rob Pirsig is not relevant in any way at all. Hmoul 04:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Quite the contrary, as Pirsig himself made clear. All activites which involve quality are subject to Rob Pirsig's MoQ - fixing a motor-cycle, constructing a flat-pack piece of furnature, crafting a sculpture, etc. That's the point. Mythiran 19:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The following quote is problematic: "...studies the philosophical aspects of Quality, and examines the distinctions and relationship between classical and romantic quality, seeking to reconcile the two views and understand how they stand in relationship to each other. In this context the two aspects of classical object-oriented and romantic subject-oriented quality roughly parallel aesthetic quality and functional quality. The resolution of the book points to a view of quality which relegates this subject-object dualism to a product of a non-dualistic Absolute." I don't find this entry very informative or useful (and not even that evocative!) beyond saying that Pirsig recognizes a distinction (named but left unspecified) that apparently needs reconciliation (unexplained) then suggests ("points to a view") that it is the product of something else (left unspecified) called the "non-dualistic Absolute". As is, this is impressionism, not philosophy. If Pirsig's inquiry is relevant, this entry does not show it. Jcblackmon 16:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)jcblackmon

Pirsig is quite relevant in the sense that the perception of quality is mutable depending on the expectation of the the person perceiving the object in question. Quality is subjective and deserves to be discussed on a philosophical level as well as scientific because it is a perception. Jefree ?? (he didn't sign off)

I'm not certain about that. I seem to remmeber Pirsig saying that Quality was beyond the subjective, he talked of a pre-intellectual conciousness of the object being the closest we could come to perception of quality. Quality was the moment that subject and object collided.

It appears we will require the aid of a specialist if MoQ is to be represented adequately and accurately to this article. (193.113.57.163 11:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC))

Elliot My only comment for now is on the narrow interpretation of quality by Wikipedia (it used to be more broad). There is no consideration of quality in philosophical or artistic terms. Keeping in mind that quality is not constrained to existential matters. How can a definition or explanation of quality not include beauty? It slaps the past 300 years of philosophy and the humanitites in the face.

Such considerations should be on a separate entry - in general everyone that considers themselves on expert on Quality will reject the premise outright. Quality professionals deal with quality as definable absolutes as determined by manufacturing, production, customer satisfaction, etc. Philosophical angles are perhaps better addressed by design considerations. There are many, many things considered to be of very high quality that are just outright ugly - not everything is meant for the public market where aesthetic considerations are placed at a premium.

As I've stated previously - quality really isn't subjective. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to measure it. Hmoul 22:32, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Reduction of clutter
This page seemed to have much too much content for a typical disambiguation page. I think the idea of merging other articles into it (specifically the one about physics quality) came from this. So I have tried to clean up this page to make it more streamlined. Partly this required moving content from this page to the physics page, and vice-versa. Hopefully this makes it easier to use and clear that all the various meanings of quality which seem to have their place deserve more thorough treatment in other articles.

Dhollm (talk) 18:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)