I think Albert Herring misunderstood Pirsig's "definition" of Quality. Total Quality Assurance is an idea that stems from what Pirsig calls "static quality." He diffentiated between Dynamic Quality and static quality in this way: Dynamic Quality is what is "real;" that is, our moment to moment existence, while static quality is man's attempt to capture and define that Dynamic Quality. Pirsig uses a wonderful quote by William James to show what he means : "There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality because the former are static and discontinuous, while the latter are dynamic and flowing."
So anyways, static quality is not necesarily bad, because without it there would be chaos and we would be unable to cope. It does run into problems, however, as in the case of Total Quality Management, when it refuses to acknowledge the Dynamic Quality that it was originally based on and attempts to set itself up as "reality".
Well, I think thats about the best I can do to represent Pirsigs metaphysics in a nutshell. If you're interested in more, Lila, the sequel to Zen, expounds on this theory and is another great read.