Glossary Q

The Glossary for Quality Management +++ Popular Articles: 'Quality', 'Quality management', 'Qualification'

Qualification in the context of quality management refers to a systematic process of evaluating, assessing, and verifying that an individual, system, process, or product meets specific predetermined criteria and standards. This comprehensive assessment ensures that the subject under scrutiny is capable of consistently delivering the expected results and complying with relevant quality and performance requirements. Qualification is a fundamental aspect of quality assurance and plays a pivotal role in various industries to ensure the reliability, safety, and effectiveness of processes and products.

Deutsch: Qualität / Español: Calidad / Português: Qualidade / Français: Qualité / Italiano: Qualità /

Quality in the industrial or service context is an attribute of a product or service. For easier reading we will write "product" but mean "product or service".

A pragmatical definition is "fit for use". This means, the product will meet your expectations and you can use it within the intended purpose.

Quality control (QC) is the process where products (and services) are checked if they fit to the expectations of consumers.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a method to

  • transform user demands into design quality,
  • to deploy the functions forming quality, and
  • to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and
  • ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process..

QFD was developed in Japan in 1966 by Dr. Yoji Akao.

Deutsch: Qualitätsmanagement / Español: Gestión de la calidad / Português: Gestão da qualidade / Français: Gestion de la qualité / Italiano: Gestione della qualità /

The term quality management has a specific meaning within many business sectors. This specific definition, which does not aim to assure 'good quality' by the more general definition, but rather to ensure that an organization or product is consistent, can be considered to have four main components: quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement (Or shorter: PDCA Plan, Do, Check, Action) .