Can Quality Be Designed.

In a question that was recently asked Can Quality be Designed; I replied with the following information.

Personally I realize there is quality product and quality service. But to me in a generalized sense of the word, it is a perception. It is not a tangible product that can be moved from A to B.

It is service that was brought about back around 1924 whereas industry professionals gained statistical data based on uniform manufacturing of mass production of the same item(s) and/or assembly of a repetitive product. If all fell in to a manufactured tangible piece of material that matches with other parts and assembled after manufacturing within a given degree of does it go together utilizing a good, average or poor methodology at which point statistical data was created. If it didn't conform statistically data was classified as NCR non-conformance as we know it today.

*Quality management adopts a number of management principles[3] that can be used by top management to guide their organizations towards improved performance. ( *Cited- Wikipedia)

Quality is a process no different than getting advice from an attorney if you do it this way you will achieve this. It's advice. It's words that steer you to correctness toward building a winning product as well as service.
Areas of Quality focus are: Customer Focus, Leadership, People Involvement, Processes(directions),Managing, Continuous Improvement,
Factual decisions based on statistical analysis, and requirements based on supplier relations.

ISO derives quality as performance improvements
* ISO 9004:2008 — guidelines for performance improvement.
* ISO 15504-4: 2005 — information technology — process assessment - Part 4: Guidance on use for process improvement and process capability determination.
* QFD — quality function deployment, also known as the house of quality approach.
* Kaizen —Japanese for change for the better; the common English term is continuous improvement.
* Zero Defect Program — created by NEC Corporation of Japan, based upon statistical process control and one of the inputs for the inventors of Six Sigma.
* Six Sigma — 6 Six Sigma combines established methods such as statistical process control, design of experiments and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) in an overall framework.
* PDCA — plan, do, check, act cycle for quality control purposes. (Six Sigma's DMAIC method (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) may be viewed as a particular implementation of this.)
* Quality circle — a group (people oriented) approach to improvement.
* Taguchi methods — statistical oriented methods including quality robustness, quality loss function, and target specifications.
* The Toyota Production System — reworked in the west into lean manufacturing.
* Kansei Engineering — an approach that focuses on capturing customer emotional feedback about products to drive improvement.
* TQM — total quality management is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. First promoted in Japan with the Deming prize which was adopted and adapted in USA as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and in Europe as the European Foundation for Quality Management award (each with their own variations).
* TRIZ — meaning "theory of inventive problem solving"
* BPR — business process re-engineering, a management approach aiming at 'clean slate' improvements (That is, ignoring existing practices).
* OQM — Object-oriented Quality Management, a model for quality management.

* (Citing from Wiki)

Quality is not something you can touch. It is a mind-set of ensuring metrics are met by pursuing a given set of instructions or goal or set of statistics.

On 7/10/11 5:20 PM, Dennis J Morgan added the following clarification:
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the Quality Management System (QMS) standards in 1987. They were the ISO 9000:1987 series of standards comprising ISO 9001:1987, ISO 9002:1987 and ISO 9003:1987; which were applicable in different types of industries, based on the type of activity or process: designing, production or service delivery.
To further prove my thoughts, if you opened a business and you were required to pay taxes what would you pay them against? You only pay State and Federal Sales Tax on a tangible personal product that exchanges hands. You do not pay taxes on your labor. You may report your earnings but no tax is charged of consulting or labor. Quality is just that a suggestion, a mind-set, nothing is physically changing hands. The only thing changing is how one performs and conforms to the statistical data they are trying to improve on.

So, the bottom-line is "Yes" the concept and the perception of Quality can be designed. It can not be designed as a product because the product is an aftermath of the quality system you choose to follow based on demands and information!