Quality in ISO 9001

We all have needs, wants, requirements and expectations. Needs are essential
for life, to maintain certain standards, or essential for products and services, to
fulfil the purpose for which they have been acquired. According to Maslow
(Maslow, Abraham H., 1954)1 , man is a wanting being; there is always some
need he wants to satisfy. Once this is accomplished, that particular need no
longer motivates him and he turns to another, again seeking satisfaction.
Everyone has basic physiological needs that are necessary to sustain life. (Food,
water, clothing, shelter). Maslow’s research showed that once the physiological
needs are fulfilled, the need for safety emerges. After safety come social needs
followed by the need for esteem and finally the need for self-actualization or
the need to realize ones full potential. Satisfaction of physiological needs isusually associated with money – not money itself but what it can buy.

These needs are fulfilled by the individual purchasing, renting or leasing
products or services. Corporate needs are not too dissimilar. The physiological
needs of organizations are those necessary to sustain survival. Often profit

comes first because no organization can sustain a loss for too long but
functionality is paramount – the product or service must do the job for which
it is intended regardless of it being obtained cheaply. Corporate safety comes
next in terms of the safety of employees and the safety and security of assets
followed by social needs in the form of a concern for the environment and the
community as well as forming links with other organizations and developing
contacts. Esteem is represented in the corporate context by organizations
purchasing luxury cars, winning awards, badges such as ISO 9000, superior
offices and infrastructures and possessing those things that give it power in
the market place and government. Self-actualization is represented by an
organization’s preoccupation with growth, becoming bigger rather than better,
seeking challenges and taking risks. However, it is not the specific product or
service that is needed but the benefits that possession brings that is important.
This concept of benefits is most important and key to the achievement of
quality.
Requirements are what we request of others and may encompass our needs
but often we don’t fully realize what we need until after we have made our
request. For example, now that we own a mobile phone we discover we really
need hands-free operation when using the phone while driving a vehicle. Our
requirements at the moment of sale may or may not therefore express all our
needs. By focusing on benefits resulting from products and services, needs can
be converted into wants such that a need for food may be converted into a
want for a particular brand of chocolate. Sometimes the want is not essential
but the higher up the hierarchy of needs we go, the more a want becomes
essential to maintain our social standing, esteem or to realize our personal
goals. Our requirements may therefore include such wants – what we would
like to have but are not essential for survival.
Expectations are implied needs or requirements. They have not been requested
because we take them for granted – we regard them to be understood within
our particular society as the accepted norm. They may be things to which we
are accustomed, based on fashion, style, trends or previous experience. One

therefore expects sales staff to be polite and courteous, electronic products to be
safe and reliable, policemen to be honest, coffee to be hot etc. One would like
politicians to be honest but in some countries we have come to expect them to
be corrupt, dishonest or at least, economical with the truth!
In supplying products or services there are three fundamental parameters
that determine their saleability. They are price, quality and delivery. Customers
require products and services of a given quality to be delivered by or be
available by a given time and to be of a price that reflects value for money.
These are the requirements of customers. An organization will survive only if
it creates and retains satisfied customers and this will
only be achieved if it offers for sale products or
services that respond to customer needs and expecta-
tions as well as requirements. While price is a
function of cost, profit margin and market forces, and
delivery is a function of the organization’s efficiency
and effectiveness, quality is determined by the extent
to which a product or service successfully serves the
purposes of the user during usage (not just at the
point of sale). Price and delivery are both transient features, whereas the
impact of quality is sustained long after the attraction or the pain of price and
delivery has subsided.

The word quality has many meanings:
A degree of excellence
Conformance with requirements
The totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy
stated or implied needs
Fitness for use
Fitness for purpose
Freedom from defects imperfections or contamination
Delighting customers
These are just a few meanings; however, the meaning used in the context of ISO
9000 was concerned with the totality of characteristics that satisfy needs but in
the 2000 version this has changed. Quality in ISO 9000 :2000 is defined as the
degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements. The
former definition focused on an entity that was described as a product or
service but with this new definition, the implication is that quality is relative to
what something should be and what it is. The something maybe a product,
service, decision, document, piece of information or any output from a process.
In describing an output, we express it in terms of its characteristics. To
comment on the quality of anything we need a measure of its characteristics
and a basis for comparison. By combining the definition of the terms quality

and requirement in ISO 9000 :2000, quality can be expressed as the degree to which
a set of inherent characteristics fulfils a need or expectation that is stated, generally
implied or obligatory.
Having made the comparison we can still assess whether the output is
‘fitness for use’. In this sense the output may be of poor quality but remain fit
for use. The specification is often an imperfect definition of what a customer
needs; because some needs can be difficult to express clearly and it doesn’t
mean that by not conforming, the product or service is unfit for use. It is also
possible that a product that conforms to requirements may be totally useless.
It all depends on whose requirements are being met. For example, if a company
sets its own standards and these do not meet customer needs, its claim to
producing quality products is bogus. On the other hand, if the standards are
well in excess of what the customer requires, the price tag may well be too high
for what customers are prepared to pay – there probably isn’t a market for a
gold-plated mousetrap, for instance, except as an ornament perhaps!