What key steps are needed to increase the quality of an organization’s outputs?

Capture a systemic view of the organization from the perspective of how it creates and retains customers. See also Management System and Quality Management System
Review the culture and if necessary embark on a programme to change it to a culture in which quality is the first priority and in which people are encouraged to identify problems that may affect the quality of products and services and recommend improvement without fear of reprisals.
Identify and review the mission management, demand creation, demand fulfilment and resource management processes and if necessary embark on a programme to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.
Use these processes to:
Establish customer needs and expectations - not doing this will certainly lead to unsatisfied customers.
Design products and services with features that reflect customer needs and expectations using effective demand creation processes.
Build products and services so as to faithfully reproduce the design which meets the customer's needs and expectations by using effective fulfilment processes
Verify before delivery that your products and services possess the features required to meet the customer's needs and expectations.
Prevent supplying products and services that possess features that dissatisfy customers by installing risk management provisions in your business processes.
Discover and eliminate undesirable features in products and services even if they possess the requisite features by rigorous product and process design reviews.
Find less expensive solutions to customer needs because products and services which satisfy these needs may be too expensive.
Make your operations more efficient and effective so as to reduce costs by rigorous process reviews.
Discover what will delight your customer and provide it. (Regardless of satisfying customer needs your competitor may have provided products with features that give greater satisfaction!).
Periodically review organizational performance and identify opportunities to increase performance by better control, better utilization of resources and better understanding of customer needs.