Customers determine whether a product fulfills their needs or satisfies them. "Quality control", then, is the process of finding out what the customer wants, along with designing, producing, delivering, and servicing the product--and ultimately satisfying the customer's expectations. For many years, people considered a product to be of good quality if it passed final inspection before being sold. Today, manufacturers acknowledge that quality should be a focus in all phases of production. More important, manufacturers now see that they should continually look for ways to improve their product quality, using a concept called "total quality control" (TQC). Given the emphasis on the importance of quality in industry today, it's important that technology educators focus on it. This article provides background on the subject and a related activity, the gambrel roof truss challenge, which is appropriate for students from middle school through college levels. (Contains 5 figures and 9 photos.)