Is "Quality" just "Fitness for Use"?

bobdoering

Stop X-bar/R Madness!!
Trusted Information Resource
#21
The true failure here is the person who put the product out there to sell. Is there no sense in quality? Wait.... is it possible that a well intentioned person noticed it, questioned management, and management's response was "Put it out there anyway. Someone will buy it". Where's the quality failure now?
For this product, they probably felt that having it available to sell was better than the overhead of attempting to "send it back" for refund. I bet their return channels are not as well defined as automotive. But, it may be why they can keep costs reasonable. There is a cost to "perfection", and not everyone is willing to pay for it.

Remember generic food? If you bought a can of generic pears, the pears may not be "perfect" halves found in your Del Monte brand cans. Who cares? If you bought a fresh pear, and it had a bad spot, you would just cut it off, too. Is the perfection of a half pear worth the 40% increase in price?

It depends. But, it sure didn't bother me. Even the black and white labels didn't bother me. I am awaiting their return....could be soon.....if the economy keeps up....
 
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A

amanbhai

#22
A while back I went to Lowe's to get a small toolbox to keep in the kitchen--something to hold a few basic tools like a hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, etc. that would keep me from having to go to the basement every time I needed something.

The one I bought is pictured below, and the logo plate being skewed raised some interesting questions:

  1. Is the logo being off-center evidence of something that one should be concerned about? Does it mean that there's something deficient in the manufacturer's processes? The toolbox is perfectly functional, and does what I wanted it to do. Juran defined quality as "fitness for use"--is that a good general definition?
  2. If you were looking at toolboxes in the store and notices this "defect," would it cause you to buy a different product, all else being equal? If so, why?
  3. Assuming that you bought this toolbox would the "defect" have any influence on future purchases?
  4. Bonus question: Can you guess where the toolbox was manufactured?

made in china, i guess
 

Randy

Super Moderator
#23
I have a hard time equating "fitness for use" with quality.....I ridden and worked on MI-24's and they may have been "fit for use" but there was very little quality about them.

A raw lizard may be fit for use and a meal if need be, but it ain't quality either.
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#27
Interesting responses so far. This is all about personal perceptions, so there's no right or wrong, which is part of the reason I brought it up. I saw the toolbox as meeting my requirements wrt function and price. We all have our relatively minor obsessive-compulsive issues, where if we perceive something as being "wrong," and it bugs us, reason doesn't enter into the thought process. The folks who would yank the thing off, or try to fix it are the same ones who would be driven crazy by seeing a picture hanging crooked on the wall in someone else's house.

In relating this to our own work, it becomes a question about how we deal with unspoken (or unwritten) customer requirements, and where to draw the line. We have to be aware of the ways in which our products represent our companies, regardless of the specifications, and know when and where to draw the line.

In a similar situation, a purchasing manager where I once worked brought me a couple of sample parts from potential suppliers. It was a very simple part--a small (~8"x10") aluminum panel with holes punched in each of the four corners. There were no cosmetic requirements on the drawing because finish wasn't important--the part would be buried in a large assembly where the customer would never see it. One of the candidates supplied parts with "mill finish," meaning that other than the requisite anodizing, nothing was done to the surface of the parts. The other supplier ran the parts through a Timesaver, a sort of sanding machine that gave the parts a nice brushed finish. Both samples were perfectly functional and as I remember it, any price difference there might have been was negligible. I reported back to the purchasing guy that both samples were "good" and insofar as function was concerned, one was no better than the other. It was left to him to pick a supplier, and guess which one it was. The supplier who did a little bit extra got the business.

In the case of the toolbox, there's simply not enough evidence at hand (imo) to make a qualitative decision about the manufacturer or the seller. I might have gotten the one-in-a-million that escaped. We know nothing about the manufacturer's processes, and the skewed logo plate doesn't tell us anything useful about them. What I know from a personal standpoint is that I got what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#28
Good discussion.

Quality is judged on what we find important personally. I'm sure there are people who wouldn't give a flying hoot about a crooked name plate, but it would bother me - probably not enough to move to a different brand though, unless they are all crooked.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
#29
Quality = fitness for use....

When making an emergency landing at night turn on landing light and locate area for landing.....if you don't like what you see turn landing light off and continue to landing point.

Just because it serves the purpose as being fit for use doesn't necessarily make it quality:lol: (Been there a couple times...UGLY!)
 

Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#30
FWIW:
I am aware of "cooperative" efforts by groups of small manufacturers to present a larger image to global purchasers. Whereas Walmart, for example, might not be willing to deal with a small supplier who could only supply 100,000 units of a product, Walmart "might" be willing to deal with a "cooperative" of ten small suppliers which could each supply 100,000 units for a total of the one million Walmart requires.

Such a cooperative might consolidate all of the production inventory in one site where it might be packaged, labeled, and any special logos applied (private branding anyone?) to the product AFTER manufacture.

In theory, it is a WIN-WIN proposition: Walmart gets the quantity it wants and has ten chances to get "some" product; if any one of the ten suffers a force majeure event, Walmart still gets most of what it bargained for.

The members of the cooperative get business they would not have been able to pursue and, hopefully, none of the ten would have been totally reliant on Walmart [unlike with Sears in past days] to refrain from making them captive suppliers and beating them down with threats to put them out of business if they didn't accept little or no profit.

If such a cooperative built Jim's box, it is likely the logo label was applied post-production, maybe even by an independent supplier hired by Lowe's to add a Lowe's house logo to the generic boxes. (I'm aware Lowe's has the Kobalt tool line to compete directly with brands of rival retailers, including Home Depot's Husky brand and Sears' Craftsman - Taskforce is another Lowe's house brand, which is distributed by LG Sourcing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lowes. Perhaps LG Sourcing, Inc would supply a direct answer of WHO put on the crooked LOGO tag.)

My purpose in this post is to demonstrate a mini root cause investigation process, NOT a definitive answer as to the root cause.
 
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