What is Quality?

What is quality?  I propose that quality pertains to systems, projects, products and/or services provided by an organization with an expected value proposition related to the same.  It translates to "conformance to requirements" as set out by the value proposition and of course can be high, low or whatever the specification mandates. 

David Straker submitted an article that first appeared in Quality World, the Journal of the Chartered Quality Institute, stating that quality means understanding and optimising the whole system of value interchange between all vested parties including the company selling the product or service, employees, customers, governments and regulators. 

Christian Vest Hansen, quoting Robert Glass, says that quality is "a collection of attributes: portability, reliability, efficiency, usability, testability, understandability and modifiability."  Each of these attributes may rank differently in importance for any given project, product or service, but quality can never be any one of them alone.  Some may not care about portability at all, and a product that is only reliable and nothing else, cannot be considered a quality product.  Quality can be a high or low value as long as it meets the specifications set out at the beginning. 

Food quality by default assumes that a product is safe, meeting minimum standards of safety as defined by internationally recognized practices such as HACCP or GFSI.