I don't really like the way researching quality currently works. It doesn't really make sense compared to the real world. With most products/technologies, quality is relative, and research is continually ongoing to find new improvements.
I think a model along the line of the Capitalism games would work better. In Capitalism you have a "technology point" rating in a certain product. Initially it is 30 (with the global max starting off at 100). If you increase your technology rating to 100, and the global max remains at 100, you have "cutting edge" technology and you get maximum reward for quality coming from manufacturing process. If you stay at 30 but someone else brings the global max to 200, your technological process goes from 30% (30/100) to 15% (30/200) and the quality of your product decreases relatively. This way, having the best technology is a constant competition, and you can never hit 100% and never have to worry about the competition again.
It also seems to me that the quality of products in this game have nothing to do with the quality of the materials from which they are made. It would make sense that wooden furniture, say, would have 50% of its "quality" rating come from the manufacturing technique (which you can research) and 50% from the quality of the wooden boards from which it was made. While other products, such as steel, would be say 90% manufacturing process and 10% source material (iron ore). This model also comes from capitalism, and worked quite well. It makes a lot of sense and rewards research into raw material technology.
I know this is a pretty drastic change, but I think it would help the game.