Managing design quality and conformance quality: models and insights

摘要

Traditionally design quality and conformance quality are considered separately in the literature. In this paper we integrate these two quality dimensions into stylised quality decision models for synthesising design quality cost, conformance quality cost and product revenue components. We show that under both decision scenarios (either customer can or cannot perceive the actual quality deviations at purchasing time), optimal design quality, conformance quality and price decisions are positively interrelated. Our research offers both theoretical and practical contributions towards total quality management.