The document defines quality as the totality of features and characteristics that satisfy customer needs, emphasizing the importance of quality management programs in enhancing product performance, customer satisfaction, and productivity. It highlights how these programs can reduce waste, support continuous improvement, and ultimately lead to increased revenues. Key aspects include establishing operational standards, understanding customer preferences, and fostering teamwork to optimize internal processes.

1. Definition of quality
ISO "The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear
on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs". In simpler words, one can say that
a product has good quality when it "complies with the requirements specified by
the client".
Crosby “Quality is conformance to requirement”

2. Needs or importance of quality
1. Product Performance
Quality management programs improve a company's product. The primary
aspects of product quality management start with performance, reliability and
durability of the product.
With quality management programs, manufactured products undergo testing to
verify they perform according to its stated promises or features. This allows a
company responsiveness to change problem areas or improve product strengths.
By adding quality management aspects at the design phase of new products, for
example, this allows companies to design performance benchmarks into the
product.

3. 2. Customer Satisfaction
These programs can also help to ensure customer satisfaction. By including
customer surveys in the QM program, key personnel gain understanding of the
product features important to consumers.
By widening the survey scope to include noncustomers, this provides additional
insight into why these people use the services of the competitor, allowing the
company to integrate these features into their products.
Feature-specific surveys can target the areas of a product or service that need
improvement or work well already. These types of programs can help a business
create products that customer’s desire.

4. 3. Reduce Waste
A well-thought out quality management program can also help companies reduce
waste. Manufacturing companies, for example, that house raw material inventory
pay for its storage, management and tracking.
These costs are built into the price of the product. By implementing a supply-
chain management program, a company can reduce the raw materials it has to
keep on hand, saving money and valuable space.
Such a system injects a systematic approach to keeping raw material needs equal
to production requirements, which can help to bring down product costs overall,
improving the product's profit margin.

5. 4. Enhanced Productivity
Quality management programs also can identify areas for improvements in
internal processes. This approach can impact productivity by eliminating
unnecessary tasks or improving existing ones.
It also generates teamwork when a company implements employee-based mixed
departmental teams that review internal processes.
An example of this is the balanced scorecard approach. This methodology
provides a mechanism for evaluating department operations against benchmarked
performance expectations.
This type of quality program identifies how well individual areas of the company
perform when compared with its established goals. It defines whether a company
needs to streamline or re-engineer its internal processes.

6. 5. Increased Revenues
Quality management programs help companies establish standards of operation in
all departments. By using these programs in multiple areas, a company can
identify the strategies it needs to implement.
Through these programs, it can improve its reputation among its existing
customers, which can also help it attract new ones.
This results in employees spending less time and raw material inventory to
produce quality products or services.
This recaptures lost monies while refining product and service excellence,
ultimately leading to increased revenues and a better bottom line.