Many years ago, during one of the management fads that my employer
underwent, I was sent on a training course in Total Quality Management
and learned of "appropriate quality".

Many years before that, I read this:

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0553277472

"Quality -- you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But
that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that
is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is,
apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There's nothing to
talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what
it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it
is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all
practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based
on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others
in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others -- but
what's the 'betterness'? -- So round and round you go, spinning mental
wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is
Quality? What is it?"