Quality                                                                                    

3. The Deming Cycle:
 
Figure 7: The Deming Cycle
The idea of this quality control cycle is really to utilise all the information gained during the life cycle of a product in its phase of planning and (re)design in order to guarantee built-in quality. As the picture illustrates, The Deming Cycle is like a forward moving wheel passing through the phases of design, production, marketing, after-sales service, market surveys and taking care of all the experience gained for the next round. It needs to be mentioned that the effectiveness of the quality control cycle is determined by the weakest step like the strength of chain is determined by its weakest link.

4. The next process is your customer:
Fulfilling quality philosophies within in the company, Ishikawa recommends strongly that the following process in production must always be seen as a customer, e.g. taking all the responsibility that the work is properly done and will not cause any foreseen trouble in the following processes.

5. Quality control = Business management:
This wants to say that quality control is not a narrow tool which can be mutually implemented into a company in order to improve some specific aspects, but a means to improve the health and character of the company as a whole. For this it needs to be mentioned that quality control must be comprehensive to be effective.

J. M. Juaran differs between two types of quality, one called the QUALITY OF DESIGN which is the level of quality a company plans to achieve, and the other named QUALITY OF CONFORMANCE which is the difference between the actual quality and its designed quality. Most people don't realise that for the latter, costs usually fall when the quality of conformance is raised due to defective decrease and productivity growth [Ish90p.34].

Taguchi is even convinced that overall costs are cut by decreasing the allowed tolerance rate demonstrated by his quality function L=D2xC, where L stands for lost profits, D for the deviation from the target and the C for the cost needed for production with no deviation. He reminds us that this is no natural law itself but an approximating formula which needs to be strongly respected [TC90p.38].

3.1.3 Meyers Definition of Quality
The German author Meyer suggests that quality must be interpreted widely:

It's also the sum of all the subjectively true judged beneficial expectations. All the additional kinds of gains, subjective opinions, ..., and the emotions, the belief, the judgements of the market partners. The two together, the group of the provable, and the group of the subjectively for true judged beneficial expectations determine the whole gain structure of a product or a service . 
[MM87p.187].
In the following we will assume quality in this widely broad definition as default, reference to other definitions will be explicitly mentioned.

3.1.4 Total Quality Management (TQM)
There are various understandings on Total Quality Management. However, here quality will be understood in the broad sense of Meyer. The Concept of Total Quality Control in the understanding of Ishikawa gives a structure of how to employ quality in a organisation successfully. Exchanging the term control into management takes the German reader into account. Germans confuse control with checking and supervision. Moreover, the term management demonstrates the challenge to act flexible, that is to say according to the situation. The situation is always determined by the interests of the customer. These are the true quality characteristic’s. Before employing any quality standards true quality characteristics must therefore be found. The term total underlines the full commitment to quality management. Total Quality Management can never be successful, if it is done half-hearted. The term total also requires a top down approach starting with the true quality characteristics defined by the customer, before defining technical (substitute!) quality characteristics