The ABC of Qualimetry. The Toolkit for Measuring Immeasurable. Garry G. Azgaldov

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СКАЧАТЬ Quality is an essential certainty of an object (i.e., a thing, phenomenon or process), which makes it what it is and not something else. In other words, quality is the kind of certainty that distinguishes, say, a human from a horse or a table.

      This interpretation was dominant for centuries and it was not until the 20^th century that it gradually started to fall into disuse; today, it is of interest almost exclusively to professional philosophers. Clearly, in most cases it makes little sense to refer to this interpretation of quality quantification or estimation; possible exceptions may be biological taxonomy or computer-based pattern recognition.

      Interpretation II: Quality is an essential feature or property characterising a given object. Or, as Aristotle said, “… for example, warmth and coldness, whiteness and blackness, weight and lightness, and likewise other similar definitions…”

      Quality in this sense has long since been successfully quantified using tools of general sciences like metrology or commodity research of special sciences such as gravimetry, dosimetry, calorimetry, etc.

      Because the contemporary literature of science and engineering is trying to get rid of polysemantic terms the second interpretation has all but grown out of use. The term property has come to replace quality, which fact was embodied in the U. S. S. R. State Standard (GOST) for product quality terminology back in the 1970s. Therefore, the above interpretation of the term quality has no direct relevance to our present discussion of quality quantification.

      Interpretation III: Quality is the totality of properties of an object that become apparent during its intended use (operation, application or consumption).In other words, quality is a characteristic of an object such that if it is quantified it would allow, with the simultaneous recognition of all the properties of the object in quantitative terms, to measure the goodness of the object when used (operated, applied or consumed).

      This interpretation echoes another interpretation of Aristotle’s, who believed that the term quality could be, applied “… in relation to a good and a bad course of action and, generally, both good and bad belong here.”

      This, third, interpretation has become the prevailing, almost exclusive one. That is due primarily to the scientific and technological progress in industry, when an enormous variety of similar products appear around the world every year, as well as to the rapid growth of international trade in products, services and energy.

      Naturally, after this interpretation became well established and then almost exclusive the need was felt for numerous quality measurement techniques, and as a consequence, for a special discipline to give a scientific justification to such techniques. Before the twentieth century the third interpretation had found very little use; accordingly, there had been little use for quality assessment; hence, no need for qualimetry.

      Above we considered the “theoretical” reason for the relatively late origin of qualimetry as a general method for quality quantification. (Late, that is, in comparison with the origins of the methods of measurement of the two other characteristics of any production output; quantity and cost.)

      Practical Reason for the Relatively Late Origin of Qualimetry

      There is a second reason, which we tentatively call “practical”. Its nature can be educed after we answer the question: Why qualimetry as an independent science was born as late as the mid-20^th century if early quality quantification methods had appeared in and outside Russia already in the early twentieth century? We shall try to answer this question by drawing upon materials from the history of domestic science and engineering.

      In Russia, the well-known mechanic and shipbuilder A. N. Krylov developed the first scientifically grounded quality measurement method back in the 1910s. He used it to solve the problem of choosing the best warship design from the many submitted to an international competition. (The best here refers to the totality of main properties, or quality, e.g. speed, protection, gun power, etc.). That selection was necessary for the restoration of the Russian navy after the heavy losses it sustained during the Russo-Japanese war.

      Unfortunately, the Krylov method – which retains its importance among the many other qualimetric techniques to this day – upon development and successful application fell into oblivion, perhaps because it was designed for appraising the quality of rather unique objects, warships; a description of it could be found in a relatively obscure, almost rare publication (see [4]).

      Some 20 years after Krylov’s method other methods for assessing the quality of different types of products appeared. They used a very different approach: where as warships were evaluated by the so-called “analytical” (i.e. non-expert) method, here a kind of expert approach was used. These methods began to evolve from the late 1920s, when the Special Council on Product Quality under the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council of the U. S. S. R. found it necessary to use quality indices as an important tool in promoting technological progress and improving product quality. The reference was not to indexes of particular properties but to general (complex) parameters characterising product quality in general.

      An essentially similar approach was used to assess the quality of some processes, for example, the performance of a printing shop. At the same time, so-called “comparative quality factors”, which had a regulatory character, were developed for some consumer products.

      In the 1930s, the scope of application of expert methods for quality estimation expanded and they were incorporated in some industries and national standards as well as in departmental guidelines. For example, the first half of the 1930s saw the development and application of methods for evaluating the quality of some foodstuffs such as butter, canned fish, bread, confectionery and dried vegetables.

      Similar techniques were developed not only for food products but also for consumer goods, such as cotton yarn, fabrics and textile goods, and for evaluating the quality of industrial products, e.g. tractors and farm machinery.

      Quality measurement methods multiplied after WWII, in the 1950s. However, qualimetry did not emerge as an independent scientific discipline yet. Apparently, a general pattern relating to the conditions leading to the appearance of a new research topic was at work. Indeed, history shows us that before a knowledge field receives the status of a science there is a latent period when some of its principles and methods are generated and put to test. It is followed by the accumulation of a large body of unsystematised empirical data. At the same time the need may be felt for conceptualisation of the previous experience of generating those data and addressing emerging problems. The preconditions for a theoretical foundation of a new science are thus created. So emerged geometry in the ancient world. So emerged cybernetics, bionics, semiotics, operations research, econometrics, ergonomics, ecology, etc., in today’s world. So, again, it was in 1968 that qualimetry began to grow into a fully-fledged scientific discipline [3].

      More recently qualimetry split into two separate branches or independent disciplines— applied qualimetry and theoretical qualimetry, which are briefly described below.

      Theoretical Qualimetry

      Qualimetry has evolved one more branch, theoretical qualimetry, which explores general methodological issues and problems of quantitative estimation of the quality of an abstract mathematical object rather than that of any particular objects (things, phenomena or processes). The rise of theoretical qualimetry served as a decisive argument in favour of making qualimetry into an independent scientific area. The fact is that an overwhelming majority of the quality evaluation methods that were proposed in and outside Russia before 1968 lacked of any СКАЧАТЬ