Almost-Quality
We all need and expect quality, but find only defects and almost-quality. If the thing doesn't break when you use it, it might next time. Maybe the thing is not a perfect match for the application you had in mind. Maybe that product or service only failed you in little ways. Maybe the color isn't perfect. Maybe the materials used are only second-rate. Maybe it has edges that are too sharp. Maybe it is a choke-hazard. Maybe it blows up unexpectedly. Maybe the person who made the product or provided the service missed the few crucial days at school when the quality aspects were covered. Maybe lawmakers or regulators forgot something important. Don't worry, there's almost-always room for improvement. (They're working on it right now.)
Types/Categories
1. Defect: Product or Service defects. (Perhaps that gadget doesn't work properly.)
2. Mismatch: Product or service not appropriate for need. (Improper labeling, improper advertising, or improper application.)
3. Stupidity: User or provider does not know enough. (Failure to read the instructions. Failure to provide good instructions. The need for classes.)
The Benefits of Quality
1. Improve and maintain Reputation/Name/Brand.
2. Improve and maintain Relationships (with customers, end users, and the rest of supply chain).
3. Improve expected financial returns (cost justifications vis-a-vis rework, testing, product returns, and write-offs.)
4. Enhance inertia, timeliness, and reliability.
5. Reduce risk.
6. Increase competitive advantage.
7. Maintain social responsibility (relationship with general public, employees, government agencies and regulators).
The Almost-Cynical View
The never ending innovation and novelty that Capitalism promises is founded upon a bedrock of "planned obsolescence," natural decay and disintegration, and a heap of defects. If things never needed to be replaced both progress and the real world would come to a screeching halt. Pundits would say, "I told you so," and we'd blame all the right people. (The more shit happens, the more we need people to address the problems, the better for the economy as a whole. Just, if possible, let things "fail safe.")
Consequently, there has emerged a field (almost an industry) called "Quality." (Actually, it is mostly about "Almost-Quality," because it is guided by the principles of statistics, which is all about approximations, margins of error, specification limits, sampling, and imaginary populations.)
Quality, as a field, started in Manufacturing, with the likes of Shewhart and Juran. Deming followed manufacturing to Japan, and made some improvements to Quality there. These early adventurers were later joined by the likes of Ishikawa and Crosby; also Humphrey, Paulk and others in the area of Software Quality.
Today, quality is everywhere, and in every industry. The reason Capitalists rely on quality so much is that the tools can tell them precisely where the boundaries are. Producing shoddy work is no longer a hit and miss endeavor, it is calculated right down to the sixth sigma, and the last nickel. It is now possible to know "parts per million," and just how bad the decay or defect will be. (This in itself is an engineering marvel. We have created warranties, that counter precisely the lack of durability that is built into the product.) Teenagers are now worried about the quality of their YouTube videos. Doctors are now worried about the quality of their "waiting-room experience."
Over the last hundred or so years, what we still call Capitalism has gone from almost-totally "laissez-faire" to almost-totally "regulated." Still, Quality is the almost-way of promise for the extension of almost-Capitalism into whatever form it may almost-take in the future.
