Quality is placed first in our list of performance objectives because many authorities believe it to be the most important. Certainly more has been written about it than almost any other operations performance objective over the last twenty years. As far as this introduction to the topic is concerned, quality is discussed largely in terms of it meaning 'conformance'. That is, the most basic definition of quality is that a product or service is as it is supposed to be. In other words, it conforms to its specifications.