The American Society for Quality promotes quality concepts, principles, and techniques. Its Web site at www.asq.org includes FAQs and a glossary. Good books on the topic include The Deming Route to Quality and Productivity: Road Maps and Roadblocks (WWS, 1986) and Deming's Road to Continual Improvement (SPC Press, 1991), both by William W. Scherkenbach. In the United States, something of a national frenzy erupted over "quality" in the 1980s and as a result, the U.S. Congress created a 1988 law establishing the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. You can read about it at www.quality.nist.gov/law.htm and www.asq.org/abtquality/awards/baldrige.html.

One derivative of quality management is called "benchmarking." The American Productivity and Quality Center hosts a Web site at www.apqc.org/best that provides links to benchmarking sites. You'll find a good executive summary of benchmarking by Peter Griffin at www.quality.co.uk/benchadv.htm. Japanese corporations are widely envied for their exacting quality control. The NASA Web pages at mijuno.larc.nasa.gov/dfc/kai.html provide information about a Japanese quality technique called "Kaizen."