Quality is in the perception of the user

By Joe Tolezano, technical coordinator of IQA - Automotive Quality Institute

 
What is quality? The statistician William Deming said that it is everything that improves the product from the customer's point of view. The businessman Philip Crosby argued that it is the product's conformity with its specifications, while the chemical engineer Kaoru Ishikawa guaranteed that it is to develop, design, produce and commercialize a quality product that is more economical, more useful and always satisfactory to the consumer. . Honestly, the best definition found is from an unknown author: “I don't know what it is, but I recognize it when I see it”.
 
Quality is a very subjective concept, which depends a lot on who perceives it. In terms of benefits, for example, a flight on a low cost airline is infinitely less than that offered by a five star airline, however the cost of your ticket is also considerably less. In the end, the two fly and both will serve the same purpose, which is to take and bring people to their destinations. What changes here is the user's perception of quality.
 
Quality has evolved a lot over time. It is even said that evolution began before the invention of money. It started with the need to select the foods that were exchanged so that the quality of what would be eaten was guaranteed. More recently, during the Second World War, aeronautics already carried out the strict control of the manufactured parts.
 
Quality, as it is known today, started to evolve back there. During the Industrial Revolution, with the arrival of masters and supervisors, the Age of Inspection emerged, which focused on the product. Later on, during the First World War, the concept of Statistical Control with a focus on the process was instituted. The famous Statistical Process Control, CEP, was born there. Total Quality Control was created later, in the Second World War. Here the focus was on the system. Then, in the days of the Cold War, Total Guarantee Management, TQM, emerged, with a focus on the business.
 
Until the mid-1980s, there were only military standards such as the Defense Standard (DEF.STAN), the Armed Forces' standard on quality systems. It was with the emergence of ISO 9001 that quality began to be standardized.
 
It is worth opening a parenthesis. The acronym ISO refers to the International Organization for Standardization. ISO comes from the word isonomy, synonymous with equality. The organization was created in 1946, with the end of World War II, when representatives from 25 countries met in London and decided to create a new organization for standardization with the aim of "facilitating international coordination and the unification of industrial standards". The non-governmental entity started its activities on February 23, 1947 at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It is currently present in about 160 countries such as Brazil, where it is represented by the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards, ABNT.
 
In 1987 the first standard, called ISO 9000: 1987, appeared, which was based on BS-5750 (British Standard), a military standard of British origin. In the case of Brazil, it was NBR ISO 9000: 1987, which presented the literal translation of the original text with its 18 requirements. It was the first of a family of NBR ISO 9000: 1987 (9001, 9002, 9003 and 9004) standards approved.
 
The evolution of this standard occurred with the NBR ISO 9001: 1994, with a focus on preventive actions, projects and associated services. A revision with a new view on the management of the quality system would come with the NBR ISO 9001: 2000, with a process approach and PDCA concept (from English: Plan, Do, Check, Act) applied to the processes. Its next version, NBR ISO 9001: 2008, came up with subtle changes to improve understanding.
 
Today, organizations have the support of the IQA (Automotive Quality Institute), a certification body accredited by Inmetro, to implement the new version of NBR ISO 9001: 2015, which has been completely reformulated with a focus on the concept of Holistic Quality for management of quality with a more comprehensive view of the entire process that involves it. The deadline for making the transition is September 18, 2018. Better get started!