Traditional definitions of Quality
There are various definitions of quality. According to quality pioneer Joseph M. Juran quality has two meanings that are very important for its management. Quality means "features of products which meet customer needs and thereby provide customer satisfaction." Quality also means "freedom from deficiencies." Deficiencies are those errors which need rework or errors that result in failure of a product after its delivery to a customer.
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) says that quality is always relative to a set of requirements. Quality of anything can be understood by comparing a set of inherent characteristics with a set of requirements. If the requirements are met by the inherent characteristics, high quality is achieved. If the requirements are not meet by the characteristics poor quality is achieved. According to BS EN ISO9000 (BS EN ISO 9000 is a quality management system which explains the fundamentals of quality management systems and defines the terms used in the ISO 9000 series of standards.) the term "quality" can be used with adjectives such as poor, good or excellent?.