Alexander V. Kostin - The ABC of Qualimetry. The Toolkit for Measuring Immeasurable стр 6.

It all goes to show that:

1. In the present-day context, successful, i.e. effective, productive work is a key condition of the economic health of both an individual company and a country at large.

2. When we address the problem of increasing the success/efficiency of any labour the key element is the quantitative assessment both of the process and the outcome of labour; primarily its product.

3. Of the three characteristics of labour (and its outcome)  quantity, quality and cost  quality is the most complex one in terms of quantitative assessment.

4. Until quite recently, the approach to the problem of quantitative assessment of quality (primarily of products) lacked sound methodological support. At best, isolated quality quantification techniques were created, which had not any sound and unified rationale to support them. As a result, different quantifications of the quality of the same object could be worlds apart if calculated by different methods.

5. A natural corollary to propositions 14: in the early post-WWII years every industrialised country felt the need for scientific rationalisation of methods of quantitative assessment of the quality of production work and its outcomes.

6. It was F. Engels who noted that when a technical need appears in society, it pushes science forward faster than a dozen universities. The origins of qualimetry can be seen as a natural response to a pressing need for generalisation and perfection of the techniques of quantitative assessment of quality.

1.1.3.2. History of Qualimetry: From Aristotle to Our Times

Theoretical Reason for the Relatively Late Origin of Qualimetry

One may ask: why did qualimetry appear as an independent scientific discipline in the 1960s and not before?

There were two principal reasons.

The first, which we will tentatively call theoretical, is as follows. The term quality has existed in science for as much as 2500 years, since the days of Aristotle. His usage of the term referred to different concepts. (For convenience, hereafter the respective definitions for these concepts will be given a modern interpretation, in a concise form, which are more familiar and comprehensible than Aristotles definitions.  Auth.). Subsequently, it was depending on its interpretation that it was decided whether or not it was necessary and possible to quantify/estimate this concept.

Interpretation I: 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 20th 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 Aristotles, 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-20th 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 Krylovs 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.