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 does not mean, that a product is very good. A luxury car might be delivered in a good, very good or excellent condition, depending of the mood and training of the workers. This is in total not a good quality.
On the other hand, a cheap Hamburger is maybe not the best choice for your health, but you know exactly what you will get and your experience will be the same, day and night, local or abroad. That is good quality.
But at all, quality is in some aspects a subjective attribute. You can measure the reliability, you can compare it with competitor's products, or how the product met its specification.
But at the end, the satisfaction of the user is that, what defines the quality.
There are some related words
- Quality Control defines the methods to ensure that the product is error-free and quality is predictable.
- Quality Management defines the organization to analyze processes and to improve them.
- Quality Assurance verifies the product so that it will make confident the seller and satisfy the buyer.
Quality became important first in sensible industries like
- military
- health
- airplane
- cars
and continued to enter step by step all other industries.