Quality: how do we define it?

When U.S. industry, in the 1980s, woke up to the fact they were losing ground to foreign companies, their first attempts to woo consumers back to the fold revolved around cutting costs to lower prices. It didn't work. But someone finally took notice of the work Edwards Deming and Joseph Jurand were doing to add quality to the value formula for products and services in Japan. A few U.S. companies tried this approach, and it worked. Today everybody is on the quality bandwagon. Pick up any publication--from national news weeklies to small trade newsletters--and there it is.