To further enhance your comprehension of Chapters 1-3, answer the Points to Ponder questions below.

1. What is quality?
2. What does quality mean to you?
3. Describe several views of quality in the context of your own knowledge or experience. Include at least three of the following: products, defects, processes, customers, or systems.
4. Discuss the cost of quality considering failure, prevention, and appraisal costs. Give examples from your own knowledge or experience.
5. Explore specifically the costs of internal and external failures. Which one can be more expensive? Give examples, imagined or from your own experience.
6. From your own experienceschool, work, social organizationsdescribe the benefits of quality in real-world situations. Give examples.
7. From your personal knowledge and experience, what activities contribute to quality? Is quality really free?
8. What are the foundation and goals of the Six Sigma approach to quality? Is this a universal approach that may be applied to all activities in all domains?
9. Describe the ISO 9000 approach to quality. What is the basic goal? What are the key elements?
10. Explain the purpose of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. How might it be used internally for an improvement effort?