A systematic and professional approach to quality terms and definitions

Unambiguous concepts, terms, and definitions are important in communicating and understanding things. Therefore creating a clear general professional terminology for the field of quality management is an important means to achieve the objectives of the ISO 9000 standardization. However, within each organization applying quality related methodology one should apply terms according to the needs and conditions of the organization. In this approach, standard vocabularies and dictionaries may be of a great advantage. The most central terms that organizations should adopt according to the ISO 9000 standard include:

• quality
• quality management system
• quality policy
• quality control
• quality assurance
• quality improvement

Organizations should, of course, also understand the definitions and meanings of those terms in the standard way. In this sense, however, there are a lot of imperfections in practice. There is much obscurity and ambiguity in the use of key quality concepts. Especially there exist difficulties when applying e.g. ISO 9000 standards related to the following terms:

• quality versus grade
• quality management system versus already obsolete quality system
• quality assurance versus quality management
• quality policy as a general organization-dedicated code of practice
• requirements as needs and expectations
• effectiveness versus efficiency
• ensure versus assure.

The situation gets even more difficult when translating these expressions into various languages.