Define ‘quality’. I got asked it once, during a lecture about materials or production or something. I forget exactly.
But I do remember the lecturer and his love for the way metal coat hangers were made. It was his favourite topic: he was fascinated by this long piece of wire, complexly bent to make a cheap, reliable and efficient product. He thought it was one of the world’s greatest inventions.
And I think that, in relation to the quality question, its relevance was: how would a basic wire coat hanger fare if you asked people whether it was of good quality?
Answer: it wouldn’t do well. Wire coat hangers are cheap. You can buy 50 of them for £7. They’re very basic and there are far more luxurious examples of coat hangers that do a better job at hanging. You can get wooden ones, or padded ones, or ones with little clips on. Go to pretentious hotels and they’re so worried about you nicking them that they tie them to clothes rails. So they must be good quality, no? Good quality is nice, bad quality is basic: that’s what we all thought.
Ah. Not so, said my lecturer. Because in production, that’s not what quality means. When you have quality control in a factory, it’s there to ensure they build the same thing to the same standard, every time. That’s it. Is it to specification? Then it passes.
The quality control at the wire coat hanger factory doesn’t reject every wire coat hanger because it doesn’t smell of lavender or have a yellow bow tied around it. Well, I assume it doesn’t. I imagine it passes the vast majority of wire coat hangers as fit for purpose because they’re built like they should be.
Join the debate
Add your comment
We should agree......?
We all have our ideas of quality, we base it on what we’re sold is said to be quality, is quality an age thing?, would a twenty year old have a different definition to a fifty year old?,maybe quality only comes third in the pecking order behind build and as someone else said functionality?......
What about functionality?
SamVines1972 says it perfectly
Fit and finish is a easthetic charateristic, and does not amount to 'quality'.
From the moment Autocar started spouting phrases like 'oh look at the shut lines' and other such rubbish, I thought 'well, so what?!'
So often you see and hear of Land Cruisers lasting the test of time, both inside and out and when you consider the materials used 'durable, solid, if lacking in 'percerived quality' and compare these to the numerous German and other European marques that look worn and break down, you wonder what a job of a journalist is.
Is it to promote certain makes of cars? Or is it to be objective, restrained and showing good analysis. How can hacks go about distinguishing a fact from an opinion, when writing articles? Thats another subject, but in all fairness, it feeds in to the use of such phrases as above - poor judgment and misinformation.