Prior to the 1980s, quality was a constant main priority for manufacturers in North America?

No

Step-by-step explanation

Before the Japanese quality revolution that took place since the 1960s, North America's quality was doubtful, and the public's concerns grew along with the new products that arrived from Japanese manufacturers, the increase in the Japanese products on the US market was due to superior quality and lower prices. The first guess of U.S. companies was to relocate the facilities to low-wage areas, because they thought the price was the reason for customers choosing Japanese over U.S. products, but the price competition declined as the years unfolded and quality competition increased. The U.S. managers still were unaware and their analysis only consisted in financial reports, they lacked of information about customer satisfaction and competitive quality. Warnings like the one in the conference of the European Organization for Quality Control in June 1966 went unheeded because the West didn't think that Japan could become a world leader in quality.

And so, by the end of the 1970s U.S. had a strong quality crisis that attracted many national legislators and administrators, leading to companies undertaking initiatives to deal with the quality crisis during the 1980s. The initiatives focused largely on exhortation, project-by-project quality improvement and statistical process control.