QOTW: How Do You Define Quality and Reliability?

Quality is such a catch-all term that it really defies a universal definition. To me, it comprises a few parts. Once part is the stuff from which the car is made. Is it cheap plastic that will crack, break, or fade in a couple years, or it is good stuff that will last the life of the car. What about the "fit and finish" of the paint job, alignment of doors, trunk lid, and other such parts? Will pieces of the interior start falling off (like they seem to do with GM)? Attention to detail in design or assembly can define quality. Or it could be something so sujbective as the overall "feel" of the vehicle. Then there is reliability. That is how few times the car will fail to perform its job or be out of service. Will it start every time you turn the key. Will it not leave you stranded somewhere away from home? "Built to last" defines durability. Ultimately, how many miles can one reasonably expect to get out of a vehicle before it reaches the end of it service life (major failure, repair expense beyond justification, etc.). An engine that will run 200k miles before an overhaul is very much durable, even if it's gone through a dozen water pumps. None of these facets strictly corrolate with each other. I had a VW Cabriolet that wasn't the most reliable of cars sometimes, but was durable beyond belief. My new GTO seems to have excellent quality, but will it still be around after 100k miles? Who knows.

One concept of quality and reliability also has to do with how easy the car is to repair. That is, is the car laid out in such a manner that repairs are easily made rather then with difficulty and excess cost. For example, to access the oil pan on my 1995 Olds Aurora (with a Northstar type V8 engine), you have two choices to replace the oil pan gasket when a leak occurs (and leaks are very common on Northstar engines): 1. Remove the engine to access the oil pan; or 2. Remove the transaxle to access the oil pan. Either was is extremely labor intensive (and our local Mr. Goodwrench charges almost $80 per hour) just to replace a simple oil pan gasket. This to me is a very good example of poor quality design and reliability. I sometimes ask myself, Why would anyone in their right mind buy a GM car with a Northstar engine? I would have more respect for the automotive companies if they would do the following: 1. Lower the price of replacement parts for their cars; and 2. Disclose warranty reporting information to the public about ALL models of cars they manufacture. If the 2nd item was done, it would force the auto company to improve their quality and reliability of their products. What do you think? By the way, I just signed up at no charge at the TrueDelta website that is monitoring auto quality and reliability. Their URL is: http://www.truedelta.com/index.php

Reliability: you always get there. Quality: you always get there, happy. Why would anyone in their right mind buy a GM car with a Northstar engine? Answer: they wouldn't.

Comapnies need to start asking questions about quality and reliability, don't just go by lowest-price buying. Stay clear of suppliers where price of service/product has no meaning without a way to measure quality. From: http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2006/08/leadership-knowledge-management-people.html