Introduction

During the late 1960s a leading Soviet economist, D. S. L’vov, 1 observed that ‘the word “quality” figures frequently in economic literature. Dozens of different definitions of this concept exist, each of which have their own particular feature different from the others’; and he then went on to discuss the term from the philosophical, engineering, legal, economic and social points of view. Looking at the engineering aspect of quality in more detail, L’vov considered that ‘[this] aspect of quality is related to research into technical, quantifiable laws covering the formation and manifestation of physical, mechanical, chemical and other properties, of items of identical functional purpose. From this point of view, quality is commonly considered as the totality of properties of a product, which determine the possibility of its utilisation in service.’2