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C.M.Sedani Page 1 Chapter VI: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS, LIMITATION OF STUDY AND SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK Any thing experienced in terms of general cause and specific effect must be an illusion, because such causes and effect exists only relative to each other. Indeed, whatever has a beginning must have either real or unreal end.” - Swami Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, (224, pp. 124) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This research examines how a firm should select and adopt “good quality practices” to improve the manufacturing performance in SMEs as well as large enterprises. Currently, no framework or model is available, which integrates ISO 9000, TQM and Quality Awards, and decisions regarding quality performance initiatives are based on ambiguous judgements of quality managers. In past, Research has had little to offer the manager in this regard. This research aimed to fill this gap by exploring quality practices and performance measures and their assessment through a proposed model for “Good quality practices and Performance”. The study also provides the relationship of different performance measures with quality practices, to indicate the difference between SMEs and large enterprise. This chapter summarises and discusses the knowledge gained from this research and identifies areas for further research. Section 6.1 presents the conclusion and summary of key evidence of research findings of previous chapter. Section 6.2 suggests several recommendations based on empirical examination of this research in the areas of QM and adoption of initiatives for quality practitioners. Section 6.3 presents the limitations of this research, and finally section 6.4 suggests areas of future research. The thesis ends with the conclusion. 6.1 Summary of Research findings of this study Studies on service quality assessment have attracted the attention of researchers since 1970s. The researchers mainly focus on issues of measuring performance through several manufacturing and quality inputs. However, the measurement of performance is largely influenced by the expectations and

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C.M.Sedani Page 1

Chapter VI: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS,

LIMITATION OF STUDY AND SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK

“Any thing experienced in terms of general cause and specific effect must be an illusion, because such causes and effect exists only relative to each other. Indeed, whatever has a beginning must have either real or unreal end.” - Swami Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, (224, pp. 124) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This research examines how a firm should select and adopt “good quality

practices” to improve the manufacturing performance in SMEs as well as large

enterprises. Currently, no framework or model is available, which integrates ISO

9000, TQM and Quality Awards, and decisions regarding quality performance

initiatives are based on ambiguous judgements of quality managers. In past,

Research has had little to offer the manager in this regard. This research aimed

to fill this gap by exploring quality practices and performance measures and

their assessment through a proposed model for “Good quality practices and

Performance”. The study also provides the relationship of different performance

measures with quality practices, to indicate the difference between SMEs and

large enterprise.

This chapter summarises and discusses the knowledge gained from this

research and identifies areas for further research. Section 6.1 presents the

conclusion and summary of key evidence of research findings of previous

chapter. Section 6.2 suggests several recommendations based on empirical

examination of this research in the areas of QM and adoption of initiatives for

quality practitioners. Section 6.3 presents the limitations of this research, and

finally section 6.4 suggests areas of future research. The thesis ends with the

conclusion.

6.1 Summary of Research findings of this study

Studies on service quality assessment have attracted the attention of

researchers since 1970s. The researchers mainly focus on issues of measuring

performance through several manufacturing and quality inputs. However, the

measurement of performance is largely influenced by the expectations and

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perceptions of customers because they are directly utilising the manufactured

product.

The quality practitioners across the India have shown their interest in

adopting ISO 9000, TQM and QA model guidelines to manage the quality and

continual improvement in their organization, with an assumption that ISO 9000

is mainly for SMEs and TQM/QA largely applicable and practiced in LE. There is

no such model is available which integrates ISO 9000, TQM and QA models.

The selection of quality typology in Indian scenario is dependent on rise in

competitiveness and increase in sales turnover

Further, in SMEs it was observed that firms are reluctant to implement

TQM in their organizations, due to its long term process of implementation and

fear of failures of TQM programmes. They also view QA model guidelines as a

part of winning the award only, with spending the huge amount of time and

capital and even not aware with the fact; that SMEs can also participate in QA

winning procedures. This, is probably due to the two most recognised business

excellence models, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence (CPE) and

the European Foundation for Quality Management Business Excellence Model,

being developed in the West, and their use in Asia following later. Moreover,

manufacturing practices and performance differs in many ways with different set

of mind of expectations (before manufacturing) and perceptions (after selling)

across the industries. Performance measures require a different model of

quality practices; that are even antagonistic in their nature since maintaining

paradoxes; can be one of the biggest challenges for organizations in

competitive environment.

Hence, it was desirable to develop a model for adopting good quality

practices in industries to assess the impact on manufacturing practices and

performance (performance measures) to enable the managers with self

assessment of quality practices and performance measures in ISO 9000

certified firms, TQM practicing firms, and firms willing to apply for Quality Award.

Therefore, in this dissertation work, attempt has been made to provide a model

for designing the instrument suiting to both SMEs and LE and to identify the

bottlenecks for measuring the performance measures. The proposed model of

adopting good quality practices in industries to asses the impact on

manufacturing practices and performance, was in aligned with several

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frameworks of past. However, unlike past frameworks; the advantage of

proposed model can be obtained in both ways: measuring the performance as a

single construct with eight constructs of quality practices, and measuring five

performance indicators (product quality, process improvement, financial

performance, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction) with single

construct of quality practices. This dual advantage differentiates the proposed

model with all past empirical frameworks. The proposed model of quality

practices and performance measures provided the scale stability as reliability

and validity assessment, mentioned in Chapter IV of this thesis has shown that

model is statically significant for empirical investigations. Table 6.1, further

provides the summary and checklist of reliability and validity assessment of

model.

Assessment Analysis Final Items Observations Conclusion

Reliability Eight constructs of Quality Practices and One Constructs of Performance Measures (Means of all 24 constructs)

For Quality Practices N=40, For Performance Measures N=24,

The Cronbach’s α Value is ≥ 0.7

The α Value more than 0.7 is acceptable for New Scale. The analysis provides the conclusion that scale provides the internal consistency and content validity for measurement (Nunnally,1998)

Reliability All constructs of Quality Practices are considered as single Construct to measure five dimensions of Performance Measures

For Quality Practices N=40, For Performance Measures N=06,

The Cronbach’s α Value is ≥ 0.7

The Value more than 0.7 is acceptable for New Scale. The analysis provides the conclusion that scale provides the internal consistency and content validity for measurement (Nunnally,1998)

Unidimensionality Analysis

Eight constructs of Quality Practices and One Constructs of Performance Measures (Means of all 24 constructs)

For Quality Practices N=40, For Performance Measures N=24,

All GFI Values are ≥ 0.9

The GFI Values more than 0.9 provides the scale maintains the evidence of Good fit (Bentler, 1990). The Cronbach’s α Value ≥ 0.7 & GFI Value ≥ 0.9 for composite score of all nine constructs indicating that there is no evidence of a lack

Table 6.1: Summary & Check-list of Reliability & Validity Assessment

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of Unidimensionality for all constructs (Hair et al. , 2005)

Unidimensionality Analysis

All constructs of Quality Practices are considered as single Construct to measure five dimensions of Performance Measures

For Quality Practices N=40 (as a single construct) For Performance Measures N=06,

All GFI Values are ≥ 0.9

The GFI Values more than 0.9 provides the scale maintains the evidence of Good fit (Bentler, 1990). The Cronbach’s α Value ≥ 0.7 & GFI Value ≥ 0.9 for composite score of all nine constructs indicating that there is no evidence of a lack of Unidimensionality for all constructs (Hair et al. , 2005)

Discriminant Validity

For Quality Practices & Performance Measures

For Quality Practices N=40, For Performance Measures N=24,

The confirmatory Factor Analysis and Chi-Square Value for Test of Independence of all constructs ≤ 0.05

The CFA Model with KMO value ≥ 0.6 along with statistical significant value of chi-square ≤ 0.05, exhibits that constituent items estimates only one construct to maintain Discriminant validity of a scale (Ahire et al., 1996)

Criterion-Related Validity

For Quality Practices & Performance Measures

For Quality Practices N=40, For Performance Measures N=24,

The composite score of all nine constructs is indicated by Co-generic Model with Pearson co-relation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

The scale score of quality practices is co-related with performance measures shows statically significant correlation between two variables

This research provides the model for adopting quality practices in industries and

questionnaire for self assessment of quality practices in industries. The

suitability of our questionnaire can be mentioned as:

It provides the self assessment to ISO certified SMEs, for evaluating their

performance. Most SMEs start their quality journey from ISO certification,

and after receiving the certification they do not continue the quality

journey due to lack of awareness for TQM implementation and QA

guidelines. This questionnaire will provide the evaluation of quality

practices and performance in their firm, and will suggest the area of

improvement. The questionnaire includes TQM elements and QA

guidelines for assessment, which will provide them focus on attempting

the quality initiatives in their firm, beyond ISO 9000 certification. Such

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initiatives will provide them adoption and implementation of good quality

practices in their firm, which is part of TQM philosophy and QA

implementation strategy. Thus ISO certified firms, in more or less will

start/ continue their journey towards “Total quality” and continual

improvement.

TQM practing industries, shows more rigorous approach for managing

quality in their units; than ISO 9000 certified firms. However

implementation of TQM is quite challenging; since the philosophical

framework of TQM, do not provide any concrete strategy for continual

improvement. Our instrument includes several items based on QA

criteria, which will provide them certain guidelines to focus their efforts

and strategy from old paradigm of TQM to emerging paradigm of winning

the Business Excellence (Quality) Award. Our instrument also contains

the items of ISO 9000 certification, and it will provide the self assessment

to those firms, have applied for ISO certification. Thus our instrument will

provide the evaluation to TQM firms, where they actually stand for

winning the quality award and how far they are from receiving the ISO

certification.

The research instrument also provides certain guidelines and self

assessment to QA winning firms. The participation in and winning of

business excellence awards appears to be a key issue for many

organisations that have adopted business excellence. The QA category

indicated that the awards have different guidelines for SMEs and LE. Our

instrument also contains the criteria of high profile LE and thus provides

the evaluation to QA winning SMEs for their next objective of winning the

Quality Award in LE category; in recent future. It also provides them an

assessment for attaining the ISO 9000 certification.

For QA winning large enterprises (LE) the association with winning the

award is representation of high degree of prestige. In addition,

participation in awards was seen as a way of validation or getting

independent assessment of the organisations. However, our concern is

that there are a number of barriers to long-term commitment that need to

be addressed. Significantly, the most significant barriers are internal and

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relate to a lack of development of a business excellence culture, unclear

benefits from business excellence and a lack of resources. Firstly, the

failure to fully educate the majority of staff in business excellence may be

partly to blame for the failure to develop a business excellence culture.

Secondly, the focus on short-term plans in some organisations and the

failure to fully understand the long-term benefits of business excellence

means that some organisations are unwilling to commit resources to

business excellence. Thirdly, national award administrators may be

focussing too much of their time on running the awards process rather

than educating organisations on the meaning and benefits of business

excellence and how to develop a business excellence culture in their

organisations. When organisations were asked what BE administrators

should focus on improving or undertaking, more often the responses

were adoption of best/good quality practice as the highest priority

activities. In addition, and rather alarmingly, 60 % of surveyed companies

believed that the prime purpose of a BE framework is to assess a

company’s management systems and performance so that an award can

be given to the “best company” which indicates that understanding of

business excellence can be improved. Our instrument recommends to

QA winning firms, to opt for world class level of TQM adoption, beyond

the business excellence.

The research design was developed in three phases: establishing

conceptual back ground, developing the framework and testing of research

instrument (theory building), and conduction of explorative survey to obtain the

empirical investigations (theory testing). The detailed design was already

described in Chapter III of this dissertation. This research has examined several

hypotheses related to quality practices and manufacturing performance. The

key evidence of findings were mainly focusing the significant relationship

between quality practices, impact of length of time, approaches to quality

implementation, impact of other factors on manufacturing performance

(measured as manufacturing practices and performance or performance

measures). Along with newly designed model, this dissertation also provides the

evaluation methodology which incorporates length of time with quality

implementation, order of implementation of quality typology, impact of other

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factors on performance to provide several investigations along with defining the

relationship between quality practices and performance. The evaluation is not

just relating the comparison of an apple (ISO certified firms) with another apple

(QA winning firms) but provides the systematic empirical examination for ISO

certified firms in two groups ( ISO certified and TQM practicing) and QA winning

firms, have just turned into LE from SME. Thus the outcome of this dissertation

provides the empirical assessment for only ISO certified SMEs, ISO certified

and TQM practicing SMEs, and SMEs who bagged QA recently and turned into

LE. This evaluation is compatible to provide decision aid to any quality

practitioner, adopted any of these typology or all the three typologies in his firm,

irrespective of its belonging to SME or large manufacturing unit.

In addition, the length of time with quality implementation, adoption of

quality typology, selection of typology to win the quality awards and age of firms;

size of firm; type of manufacturing; and annual sales turnover also influences

manufacturing performance to large extent. Therefore, it becomes practically

difficult to set the standards and procedures for measuring and evaluating the

performance measures. The proposed model and research instrument of our

study provides the assessment for all above mentioned influencing variables on

manufacturing practices and performance. Thus it can be mentioned that our

questionnaire and research instrument provides multiple analysis for QM

practices to assess the impact on manufacturing practices and performance,

which provides an added advantage and comparison over previous frameworks.

The other aspects of quality practice significant to winning the quality

awards, and impact of quality practices on different performance indicators, and

empirical findings of manufacturing performance outcomes, is presented as a

summary and key evidences in Table 6.2.

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Table 6.2: Summary and key evidence of findings

Research Question Hypothesis To test / Findings Conclusion Key Evidence

R1: Do all quality practices provide positive and significant relationship with performance measure?

H1-1: There is significant and positive relationship between ISO 9000 quality practices and Performance Measure

Only process Management has shown positive and significant relationship with performance measure(t ≥3.0 and p ≤0.005)

H1-1: Rejected

There is insignificant relationship between quality practices and performance

H1-2: There is significant and positive relationship between TQM practices and Performance Measure

Only planning and customer focus have shown positive and significant relationship with performance (t ≥3.0 and p ≤ 0.005)

H1-2: Rejected

There is insignificant relationship between quality practices and performance

H1-3: There is significant and positive relationship between QA Model practices and Performance Measure

Only leadership, planning ,customer focus, people management, process management, and supplier relationship have shown positive and significant relationship with performance measure (t ≥3.0 and p ≤ 0.005)

H1-3 : Rejected

There is insignificant relationship between quality practices and performance

R2: Does a length of time with quality adoption provide significant impact on Manufacturing Practices & Performance?

H2-1: In SMEs, length of time with TQM implementation is significantly correlated with Manufacturing practices and performance.

In SMEs, length of time with TQM implementation has shown significant correlation ship with manufacturing practices and performance

H2-1: Accepted

Length of time with ISO certification is not significantly related with manufacturing practices and performance

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(Correlation found significant at the 0.01 level) ( MRA shown Adj. R

2= 0 .73

with ∆F=0.000 of TQM practices ≥ Adj. R

2= 0.54 with ∆F=0.000 of ISO

certification)

H2-2: In large firms, length of time with TQM implementation is significantly correlated with Manufacturing practices and performance

In large firms, length of time with TQM has shown significant correlation ship with manufacturing practices and performance (Correlation was significant at the 0.05 level)

H2-2 : Accepted

Length of time with ISO certification is not significantly related with manufacturing practices and performance

R3: Do different approaches to adopting quality in firm, provides significant impact on manufacturing practices and performance?

H3 : In SMEs, implementation of TQM before ISO 9000 provides significant impact on Manufacturing practices and performance

In SMEs, Implementation of TQM before ISO 9000 has shown significant impact on manufacturing practices and performance (ANOVA indicated that performance means of group implemented TQM before ISO 9000 was higher than other two groups)

H3:Accepted Implementation of ISO 9000 before TQM hasn’t shown significant impact on manufacturing practices and performance.

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Research Question Hypothesis To test / Findings Conclusion Key Evidence

R4: Which quality practice is significantly associated with winning the Quality Award?

H4: TQM practices are significant to win the Quality Awards

TQM practices are found significant to win the Quality awards

( ANOVA of QA winning firm with more years with TQM practices and less year with ISO certification has shown higher means over SMEs with more years with ISO certification and less year with TQM)

H4:Accepted ISO certification is not significant to win Quality Awards

R5: Is there any impact of other factors on manufacturing performance of industries?

H5-1: There is significant and positive impact of other factors on manufacturing performance of SMEs.

The impact of other factors was not found positive and significant with manufacturing performance of SMEs

The multivariate analysis has shown Pillai's Trace (F=2.361, P≤ 0.05), Wilks' λ (F = 2.904, P≤0.05), Hotelling's Trace (F=3.675, P≤0.05), and Roy's Largest Root (F = 11.133, P≤0.05) with partial eta square values for age of firm (0.33), size of firm (0.38), type of manufacturing (0.44) and annual sales turnover (0.70)

H5-1 Rejected

Only annual sales turnover provides significant and positive impact on manufacturing performance

H5-2:

There is positive and significant impact of other factors on manufacturing performance of ISO Certified SMEs

The impact of other factors was found insignificant and negative with manufacturing performance of ISO certified SMEs

Roy's Largest Root was comparatively smaller for ISO certified SMEs (value 0.39, F =1.56, P> 0.05) in comparison with other three variables to indicate at least one or two variables are negatively influencing the performance and all values of partial eta square were also found very low.

H5-2 Rejected

Both annual turnover and size of firm has shown negative impact on manufacturing performance of ISO certified SMEs.

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H5-3: There is positive and significant impact of other factors on manufacturing performance of TQM Practicing SMEs

The impact of other factors was not found positive and significant with manufacturing performance of TQM practicing SMES

Roy's Largest Root was comparatively smaller for ISO certified SMEs (Value 0.15, F=2.08, P> 0.05) in comparison with other three variables to indicate at least one or two variables are negatively influencing the performance. The partial eta square values for age of firm (0.27), size of firm (0.65), type of manufacturing (0.07) and annual sales turnover (0.74)

H5-3 Rejected

Only size of firm and annual turnover of TQM practicing SMEs have shown positive and significant impact on performance

H5-4: There is positive and significant impact of other factors on manufacturing performance of large enterprise

The impact of other factors was found positive and significant with performance. The Roy's Largest Root was found higher for (Value 26.45, F=5.78, P< 0.05) All partial eta square values were observed above 0.8.

H5-4 Accepted

All factors have shown positive and significant impact on manufacturing performance

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Research Question Hypothesis To test / Findings Conclusion Key Evidence R5: (Contd.) H5-5: The impact of other factors on manufacturing

performance differentiates SMEs from large enterprises

The impact of other factors has shown the difference between SMEs and large enterprises

(The Regression analysis has indicated higher Adj. R2

values for all factors of large units over the Adj.R2 values

of all factors of SMEs)

H5-5 Accepted The age of firm, size of firm, type of manufacturing, and annual sales turnover provides positive impact on performance of large manufacturing units

R6: Is there any difference in performance measures of SMEs and Large Enterprises due to quality practice?

H6-1: There is significant relationship between performance measures and quality practice of SMEs

The significant relationship was found for product features, labour productivity, inspection cost, customer services and employee motivation (t ≥ 3.0, P≤ 0.05).

Defect reduction was observed insignificant with quality practice in SMEs

H6-1: Rejected There is insignificant relationship between performance measures and quality practices

H6-2: There is significant relationship between performance measures and quality practice of large enterprise

The significant relationship was found for product innovation, customer satisfaction, operation cost, labour productivity, and ROA/ROI (t ≥ 3.0, P≤ 0.05). However, Employee involvement has shown insignificant relationship with quality practice in LE.

H6-2 Rejected There is insignificant relationship between performance measures and quality practices

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The summary of key evidences of research findings also provides the

investigations to define cause and affect relationship, between quality practices and

performance measures. It was observed that SMEs are having less number of

adaptations of good quality practices in their firms, for example only process

management was significant to performance measures of ISO 9000 certified units, while

customer focus and planning; were found significant in TQM practicing firms. Table 6.3,

presents the plausible reasons for such differences in quality practices and performance

measures.

Table 6.3: Reasons for Insignificant relationship with performance

Type of Industry Variables

needed to

be improved

Plausible reasons for insignificant relationship

with performance measures

ISO certified SMEs Leadership

Planning

Customer satisfaction

Information Analysis

People Management

Supplier relationship

Employee

involvement

The characteristics of ISO certified SMEs have been recognized as obstacle to growth due to founder’s expertise and commitment in a particular area of the business. The behaviour of organisations management should create a clarity and unity of purpose within the organization to ensure that all organisational activities are aligned & deployed in a structured and systematic manner. In the absence of proper business vision and quality planning, these firms are only focusing the improvement in processes, and emphasizing the other important aspects of continual performance improvements.

Lack of core management practices, in the absence of formal TQM programmes, no formal education and training for quality deployment and performance improvement, insufficient and less efficient workforce, no emphasize on customer needs and value, inadequate facilities and quality infrastructure, lack of supplier relationship and employee commitment, will result only improvement in processes not in all other important aspects of continual improvement.

TQM practicing SMEs Leadership

Information Analysis

People Management

Supplier relationship

Most often, it is argued that TQM is a very long term campaign, which is characterised as “good” or “not so good”. The underlying cause of TQM deficiencies is that top management and managers failed to understand the concept of quality.

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Employee

involvement

To inspire purposeful change for improvement, mangers must have a clear understanding of quality and how “good quality practices” can help to improve the performance and competitive advantage. As recommended by Deming, TQM practices are related with a specific purpose to satisfy the customers; and our finding represents an example to his way of defining TQM to “develop quality plans for customer satisfaction”. It was observed that top management has taken these two variables as their “prime strategy” and ignored the other important elements of TQM such as employee involvement & motivation, developing strategic partners, commitment for business excellence, and operational performance improvement.

The Quality Award Models has formalized the assessment of TQM implementation into six/ nine categories along with impact on business results, and all quality practices are important to attain the business excellence. Thus present findings of TQM practicing SMEs indicates that relationship between two quality practices significant to performance measures, is due to their efforts to reach the short- term objective. Firms which have implemented TQM as long term strategy will have both operational and financial results along with satisfied employees and customers. Top management support and commitment represents anomalies in implementation of TQM as long- term strategy.

Quality Award winning firms

Employee involvement

Business Excellence (BE) is defined as, excellence in strategies, Quality practices, and related performance results. These models were developed from a set of core values and principles that are considered to be essential for long-term organisational success.

Organisations which score highly when assessed against a business excellence model are considered to be a BE organisation as they will have embedded many of the core values and principles of BE. However, there is no one route or road map to achieve this status. Organisations have decided themselves, after taking into account their business environment, culture and current position, how best to advance using the Quality Award model as a benchmark.

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With respect to the deployment of BE, CEOs were not convinced by BE or TQM. They have their own way to run the company and have their own focus. From the respondents opinion it was observed that BE deployment creates extra loading on employees, and results from BE are not seen quickly. In other response, it was stated that integrating BE with other organisational initiatives is quite difficult and firms do not have the time to document and produce evidence as to why they follow a certain path and take certain actions. It was also noted that BE can be difficult to sustain due to staff turnover and lack of resources.

Although most of the respondents were trained, it may be considered a weakness that some of the organisations do not involve their employees as it is understood that BE is already embedded in their work practices of TQM and specific training is not required. Such weaknesses is indicative that BE practices needs to improve the employee involvement to move ahead for the next objective of becoming world class manufacturing (WCM) unit.

The difference in results of five performance indicators of SMEs and large enterprises,

due to implementation of quality practices; are summarised in Table 6.4.

Table 6.4: Impact of quality practices on Performance Measures

Type of industry Observations Performance Indicator

Plausible Reasons

ISO 9000 certified SMEs (N =189)

Improvements observed Product features Labour Productivity Inspection cost Customer services

Product Quality Process Management Customer Satisfaction

The process model of ISO 9000 QMS and documentation procedures is based on standardisation of activities and conformity to specification (sub clause 8.3) along with product realization (sub clause 7.1), monitoring and measurement (sub clause 8.1 and 8.3 of ISO 9001:2001). These clauses are partially associated with Process management , supplier relationship and Quality results of TQM elements (See Appendix 3.2), which provides improvement in product features, labour productivity, and customer services and reduction in

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Improvement are not observed Employee Involvement

Employee Satisfaction

inspection cost ISO 9001: 2008 QMS specifies the provision of resources (sub clause 6.1), human resources (sub clause 6.2), infra structure (6.3) and work environment (sub clause 6.4) which are partially related with TQM elements of HR management. The other clauses of Design and development (sub clause 7.3), production and service provision (sub clause 7.5) are associated with managing the process. All these clauses are related with short-term and bureaucratic approach of meeting the quality results. There are no long- term perspectives in ISO 9001:2008 QMS for defect reduction/prevention and employee motivation.

Insignificant Relationship was observed Financial Returns

Financial Performance

ISO 9001: 2008 QMS neither emphasize on increasing the ROI/ NPV and other financial indictors nor provide any measures for the same. It is generic model for process management, and managing the cost associated with it. Thus, it is not expected that certification will provide improvement in sales and other financial returns

Type of industry Observations Performance Indicator

Plausible Reasons

Quality Award winning Large Enterprises (N=40)

Improvements observed Product innovation Labour Productivity Operation cost Customer Satisfaction Financial Returns and Improvement in competitiveness

Product Quality Process Management Customer Satisfaction Financial Performance

The Quality Award model provides the guidelines for Approach/ Deployment of quality practices as ‘enablers’ and ‘results’ to measure employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and other CPE along with scoring points. It provides the self- assessment methodology for measuring the performance. Due to item classifications and scoring dimensions, it is possible to visualise the organisational maturity stages and development. The QA model provides the implementation guidelines of core values like customer driven quality, competence development, long-range perspectives, process orientation, prevention, partnership,

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Improvement are not observed Employee Motivation

Employee Satisfaction

continuous improvement etc. and scoring system to assess the start-up, on the way, and mature stages. It is thus possible to observe the improvements in several quality dimensions and performance measures.

Most of the reasons were already described in Table 6.3

6.2 Recommendations to Quality Practitioners

This research has many recommendations for quality practitioners using ISO 9000,

TQM and Quality Award (BE) Model guidelines in their firms. Based on key evidence

presented in section 6.1., we would like to propose these recommendations to several

Quality Practitioners:

Applying ISO 9000 for internal reasons is likely to mean the same thing as

implementing quality practices. Companies applying ISO 9000 by external

motivation such as customer pressure or as a promotional tool saw fewer benefits

from it than those companies that were convinced of ISO 9000’s possibilities to

improve management practices and, consequently, performance.

The ISO certified SMEs has shown the mere focus on process improvements only

and the other important dimensions of employee involvement, customer satisfaction,

strategic planning, commitment from top management, supplier relationship and

information analysis was found ignored or underestimated. In contrast, TQM

practicing SMEs, also lagging in several dimension; has shown improvement in

quality (Strategic) planning and customer satisfaction. Thus it is recommended to

Quality managers to in cultivate the TQM practices in their firms and to think beyond

the process improvements.

The impact of length of time with ISO certification has shown insignificant

relationship with manufacturing practices and performance, which indicates that after

receiving this certification; most organizations haven’t continued their quality journey

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or stopped their quality improvement initiatives. The findings of this study

demonstrate that approaches to management of quality do impact on manufacturing

practices and performance in organizations. The length of TQM programme has

shown to affect the level of quality practices and performance measures. On the

other hand, the length of years with ISO certification failed to produce similar results.

In Indian industries, present research has provided that all 40 SMEs implemented

TQM/QA guidelines are now being recognised as large enterprises and maximising

the higher financial returns with satisfied customers. It is thus recommended to

Quality Managers of ISO certified SMEs, to focus on the quality efforts by start

practicing TQM and implementing QA guidelines to achieve the spontaneous growth

in competitiveness and continual improvement. Our study provides the evidence that

time serves as a proxy to the maturity of TQM implementation as well as impact on

firm’s performance.

The approaches for adopting the specific quality typology in firm, is one of the most

challenging issues in SMEs. Rather this topic remains the hot discussion in

academic literature to obtain the contradictory or complementary relationship of ISO

9000 with TQM. Present research would like to support the Quality Managers of

SMEs to keep continuing the TQM practices in their firms. The key evidence

supports that those firm implemented TQM before ISO 9000 are at better

competitive position, than those implemented TQM after ISO 9000. The study also

provided the outcome that firms implemented both ISO 9000 and TQM

simultaneously, are less competitive than other two groups, since it is quite difficult

to handle both quality practices simultaneously and to deploy these practices in

actual implementation. It is therefore recommended to have an early start with TQM

and later to think about ISO 9000 in manufacturing firms. Study also leads to the

conclusion that, only commitment to long-term TQM programmes differentiates firms

in terms of their quality practices and performance in relation to QM.

This study also supports to this notation that, “TQM practices are integrative

approach for winning the Quality Awards”. The key evidence suggests that more

years with TQM leads to winning the Quality Award in SMEs, and more years with

ISO 9000 is not significant with winning the awards. Thus message is clear to

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Quality Managers, to implement TQM and deploy QA model guidelines with a long

term vision, for winning the Quality Award.

From the response to open ended questions, it was found that most QA wining firms

have implemented the focus on Policy Deployment and Daily Routine Management

(DRM) to achieve their TQM implementation. As a result, these firms have redefined

its management of processes for New Product Development System, Manufacturing

Quality, Supplier Quality and Customer Quality. What does this example show? It

demonstrates that QA winning firms are capable of not only understanding how they

fit into the supply chain but also how the product is used by the customer. They are

interested and capable of both managing process improvement across the supply

chain, as well as, completing this process in a short time frame. The top

management goal of maximizing customer satisfaction means that employees and

managers do not need spend time authorizing engineers and other personnel to

tackle such problems. Suppliers and customers do not have to worry about paying

for such service. This provides QA winning firms with an edge over companies

without such top management commitment.

The analysis for impact of other factors has shown the difference in quality culture

of SMEs and large enterprises. The findings of impact of quality practice on several

performance measures also shown the differences in implementation and adoption

of quality culture in SMEs and LE. Comparing the empirical outcomes of SMEs with

QA winning large enterprises these difference can be summarised as :

1. Due to conscious or systematic attention to maintain the suitable firm size, with

cross functional team building objectives and existence of quality circles, large

units maintains the consistent performance outcomes.

2. The age of industry helps to create the brand image in market as well as among

the customers and other stack holders; since the growth of organization is known

to them through market shares and annual reports of Board of Directors.

3. The area of manufacturing is related with product launching and innovation as

the strategic introduction decisions are strongly linked to the company's (LE)

overall strategy and product planning, and includes all decisions associated with

strategic new product planning, and the newness of the product and market.

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Strategic launch decisions can be distinguished as being: product strategy,

market strategy, and firm strategy, As SMEs usually do not pay much formal

attention to strategy formulation in general, it is likely that these strategic launch

decisions, will not receive much attention either.

4. The annual turnover of a large unit is based on strategic decisions, and there

does not seem to be total consensus about the interpretation of tactical

decisions, since this set of decisions is associated with the general roles of the

different aspects of the marketing mix (product, promotion, pricing, and

distribution) which ultimately leads to improvement in financial performance.

5. The technological up gradation of workforce (type of manufacturing), with

necessary training and exposure to SPC; provides an opportunity in improving

the operation cost with less number of defects in manufactured product of large

firms. In SMES since human resources are insufficient and adequate

infrastructure and well committed quality culture is not available, it is not possible

to go beyond the improving the product features.

6. Customer satisfaction is key to benchmarking. Most of QA winning firms have

shown proper mechanism to obtain the customer feedback and communicating

the voice of customers to every level of organization. They involve both suppliers

and customers while designing the new product or improving the existing one. In

contrast, SMEs are merely focusing on resources to manage the processes and

do not involve the stakeholders while designing the process/product.

7. Financial performance of a firm is judged by many parameters, but for quick

overlook, the growth in sales rate; increase in ROI and ROA provides the

indication that firm is doing well in the business or not. For SMEs, relying on only

ISO certification; is not going to help them much in improving the financial

performance of firm, instead adoption of TQM programmes will provide the

visualisation of improvement in financial performance in their organization.

Finally, this research through its empirical findings and past review of literature;

provides the road map to quality managers, to move from ISO 9000 to TQM, and from

TQM to Business Excellence (Quality Award). Table 6.5 presents the roadmap for

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moving from ISO 9000 to TQM, and Table 6.6 shows the road map from TQM to

Business Excellence (Quality Awards)

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Table 6.5: Moving from ISO 9000 to TQM

Steps Focus on Road Map to Reach

Step I SWOT

Analysis

Identify the key areas of organizations: Strength, Weaknesses,

Opportunities and Threats (Where are we now?)

Step II Decide the

Goals,

Objectives

and Vision

Decide the benchmarks for continual improvements such as

improving product quality, innovation, customer satisfaction, Financial

returns, defect reduction, improvement in sales, labour productivity

and other key areas with TQM framework (Where we wants to go?)

Step III Developing

the Quality

culture in

organization

To promote awareness of quality as an increasingly important

element in competitiveness

To share the information on successful quality strategies of

benchmarks, and the benefits derived from implementation of

these strategies

Step IV Focus on

Core Values

Customer driven quality

Commitment from top management (Leadership)

Continuous improvement of all processes

Employee participation and development

Developing strategic plans (Based on step II)

Fast response

Design quality and prevention

Developing Long-range plans

Management by facts

Partnership development

Step V Develop a plan to put elements of TQM in place

Providing training and education to all employees

Developing strong communication and information system

Developing Quality infrastructure

Formal documented QMS (Quality management system)

Step VI Develop commitment to TQM and advance the Process

Developing the linkage among quality practices such as leadership

and planning, planning and customer satisfaction, information

analysis and process management, process management and people

management, process management and supplier relationship, people

management and employee involvement etc. and focus the shift

towards results (based on step II)

Implementation of QMS

Demonstrate top management commitment and involvement

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Ensure employee commitment and involvement and launch

the reward scheme to motivate the employees.

Create continuous improvement culture

Steps Focus on Road Map to Reach

Step VII Measure Quality ( based on customers value, managed into

processes, seek synergies among quality, cost, schedule

and time)

All measures linked to customer value

Customer segments

Returns to Stakeholders

Product design (as per customers need)

Performance against benchmarks

Step VIII Feed back and

Control

Reward and recognition for quality performance

Take remedial actions for managing the quality for

improvement in performance , and customer value

Step IX Refocus on

goals and

Objectives

Redefine the goals and objectives (Based on feedback

and control)

Developing cross functional approach

Improvement in product design

Improvement in Technology to reduce complexities in

manufacturing

Refocus on strategic factors such as employee

involvement and human resource management

Role definition, bring necessary changes in quality culture

in organization and redefine the organization structure (if

required)

Step X Continual

Improvement

Accommodate the changes in QMS

Repeat the steps V to IX for continual improvement

Table 6.6: Moving from TQM to Business Excellence (Quality Award)

Steps Focus on Road Map to Reach

Step I SWOT Analysis Identify the key areas of organizations: Strength, Weaknesses,

Opportunities and Threats (Where are we now?)

Step II Decide the Decide the benchmarks for continual improvements such as

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Goals,

Objectives and

Vision

improving product quality, innovation, customer satisfaction,

Financial returns, defect reduction, improvement in sales, labour

productivity and other key areas with BE Model guidelines.

(Where we want to go?)

Step III Developing the

Quality culture in

organization

To promote awareness of quality as an increasingly

important element in competitiveness

To share the information on successful quality strategies

of QA winning firms, and the benefits derived from

implementation of these strategies

To improve the understanding of the requirements for

quality excellence (two basic interrelated elements of

conceptual model and institutional strategy)

Step IV Focus on

Two elements of

Quality Award

Strategy

The conceptual Model

Focus on Enablers (Organizational leadership, strategic

planning, and human resource management and

information analysis), Processes (Process

management) and Results (Employee satisfaction,

customers satisfaction, impact on society, and business

results)

Developing Institutional Strategy

i) Developing strong communication system to meet

generic requirement of QA criteria, information sharing

with diverse mix of organization (manufacturers, service

providers, suppliers, stockholders etc.)

ii) Developing assessment capability for self

assessment, assessment by third-party

iii) Broad involvement in QA programme through

participation from all sectors, geographical areas, and

other organizations.

iv) To promote the QA philosophy much more than a

contest, such as it is a symbol of national effort to

promote fundamental changes in organization and

achieving the quality excellence

Step V Develop a plan to put QA Strategy elements in practice

Providing self assessment training and education to all

employees

Developing strong communication and information

system

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Developing and extending the necessary quality

infrastructure

Preparing for the QA implementation guidelines

Launch rewarding mechanism for employees

Step VI Develop commitment to QA programme

Developing the linkage among enablers, processes and

business results (based on step II)

Implementation of QA programme

Demonstrate top management commitment and

involvement

Ensure employee commitment and involvement

Create continuous improvement culture

Step VII Start self Assessment

Separate assessment for enablers, processes and

results

Identify the scope for the improvements

Bring the necessary changes

Step VIII Full self-assessment line Manager/whole organization/ quality practices

Full self assessment on a scale from 0 to 1000 points in

three evaluation dimensions viz. Quality approach,

Quality deployment, and Quality results

Pin pointing the opportunities for improvement

Step IX Self-asses cycles

Assessment from external organizations, stakeholders

and third party assessment

Obtaining the score on a scale from 0 to 1000 and

comparing with internal self- assessment

Openness to accept the criticism, and implementation of

changes (if required)

Continuing self-assessment cycle till desirable outcomes

Step X Own self-assessment Linking to systems/ Business Excellence

Reward for quality performance

Focus on broader system, unending, proactive to

opportunities, big breakthroughs and small steps.

Adoption of scientific methods for continual

improvement.

Openness to response the errors.

Challenge status quo for strategic improvement.

Customer driven through vision, enablement, and

empowerment.

Focus on business results through capable systems.

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Shifting from old paradigm to new paradigm for

continual improvement.

Applying for Business Excellence (Quality Award)

6.3 Limitations of this Research

The following limitations of this research are worth mentioning.

One of the major limitations of this study is cross-sectional research design.

Although cross-sectional survey of quality in Indian industries has been carried

out with statistically significant response rate but it is not enough to generalize

the results in a vast country like India.

The other limitation of this study is, since present study involved the small

sample of central India-wide population due to several constraints of geographic

proximities and time; the comparative study for a larger sample will provide more

microscopic examination of relationship between quality practices and

performance.

For evaluation of quality practices and manufacturing performance in industries,

only expectations and perceptions of the stakeholders are considered. It is also

important to mention that the empirical outcomes of this study may differ with

respect to attitudes of quality practitioners in different manufacturing sectors, on

their locations and behavioural pattern.

The actual difference of relationship between quality practices (variables) and

organizational performance may not take place as a simple linear and

simultaneous model tested in this study; rather, it could work in a more complex

interrelationship among the elements of TQM practices.

Although the data showed a significant QM-performance correlation, they did not

strictly prove that QM caused performance to increase, but only that an

association existed. A longitudinal study would be required to support a causal

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inference strictly for high performance improvement in quality practicing

organizations.

The proposed model of this study although applicable to organizations in various

manufacturing sectors, from the literature is clear that models and frameworks

cannot take responsibility from management as to how to implement quality

practices. Therefore, the framework represents a guide for organizations starting

the implementation of quality practices.

6.4 Scope for Future work

Any research of this nature, particularly in the field of QM and performance measures is

required to be extended considering the limitations of the study. Some of these areas

where further research is required to be carried out to tackle the limitations of the

proposed approaches are as follows:

The study with large sample size will provide more microscopic examination of

relationship between quality practices and performance.

The comparison of ISO certified SMEs with recent QA winning SMEs will provide

more understanding of the impact of ISO certification and TQM/QA guidelines in

relation to performance measures.

The comparative analysis between TQM practicing SMEs and QA winning SMEs

will provide the similarity and differences between these two types of industries,

adopted TQM in their firms.

The comparative analysis of QA winning SMEs with QA winning large firms will

provide the comparison and assessment of quality practices and performance

measures.

A longitudinal study of ISO certified firms after implementation of “Good quality

practices” by the proposed model of this research will provide the assessment in

performance improvement of SMEs.

The assessment of performance measures of four national QA models with large

sample size will provide the comparison among them to indicate which quality

frame work (model) is better than other.

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6.5 Conclusion

India’s prospects for revolutionizing global industry hinge on the answers to many

crucial questions. Among these:

• How will Indian manufacturers fit into global value chains in terms of maintaining the

product quality?

• What are the critical areas where innovation in Indian manufacturing industries (for

example, operations management, process innovation, design or distribution) is starting

to lead rather than lag behind innovation by global manufacturers along with managing

the quality practices?

This research has examined the quality practices in Indian industries and would like to

provide the conclusion to sum up the certain issues related with deploying quality

practices in manufacturing units:

Top management support is expected to be integral to encouraging the practices

and behaviours that lead to quality performance throughout the organization. Top

management should accept its responsibility for quality and provide active leadership

through well-developed, focused strategy and encourage the development of strong

customer relationship. For ISO 9000 practitioners, the message is quite clear by

developing work attitude, through developing communication of clear strategy, with

more focused approach towards managing the customer satisfaction, involving both

suppliers and employees in quality panning , and providing them necessary training and

infrastructure, it is possible for an organization to progress slowly and steadily towards

quality performance. In short inclusion of “good quality practices” will provide the

necessary platform to them, to create long-term orientation and a managerial climate

that focuses on goal congruence for quality performance.

TQM implementation, have created tangible and intangible benefits for ISO

certified SMEs. Intangible benefits included role clarity so that each person understood

their role in the organization, their suppliers and customers, and their metrics. The focus

on competency and involvement resulted in a different approach to managing people.

The focus on management points and check points and the systematic approach to

planning (including catch balling or adjusting plans across roles) all resulted in a

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management system where charts, goals and current performance relative to plan all

became commonplace throughout the company. Also, common for every problem that

came up was a systematic analysis of the problem, steps taken to resolve it, impact of

the steps and learning from each observation. Elements of TQM can be grouped into

two dimensions – ‘management system’ or ‘soft’ part and ‘technical system’ or ‘hard’

part. Without both elements, TQM would not be successful. The TQM-weighted

scenario describes a situation that would be a possible outcome by strengthening the

strong areas and developing the weak ones brought forward in this study. In this

scenario, especially certain tacit, behavioural and intangible features such as an open

culture, employee empowerment and executive commitment, can produce an

advantage. There is increasing recognition of the importance of human factors in

successful TQM implementation. This way, TQM can be seen as a potential source of

sustainable competitive advantage. Based on our study, the message for other

organisations is that TQM’s highest purpose and its real contribution to business is

providing a framework that helps the company understand and acquire these resources

as part of an integrated business management. It is quite possible for companies to

prosper outside the confines of the TQM ideology, so long as they nurture the intangible

resources critical to survival and success.

In a new direction of quality, quality awards are used as organisational self-

assessment for the excellence in quality and business. The QA winning firms have thus

represented that their only goal to fly in the face of conventional wisdom is to “maximize

shareholder value”. We believe that this is a key choice for all these firms. In other

words, we have examined whether Indian companies that have won the Quality Awards

have delivered better metrics than comparable companies in the Indian marketplace.

Our results suggest that award winning company seem to have chosen a deliberate

strategy not to “milk the cash cow” (that is not to drain the firm of resources that fuel the

generation of ideas for the future) but instead focus on improving quality subject to

financial returns targets. This resulted in a deliberate choice to focus on how to compete

and manage the quality initiatives in QA winning firms. In the UK, more than 41,000

companies have tackled their quality problems by becoming registered to ISO 9000 (BS

5750). Elsewhere in the world, registrations are also increasing, with big growth in North

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America, Germany, China, Italy, Japan, India and the Pacific Rim. Many of these

organizations are now seeking to build on their success, and are turning to TQM. The

first UK award for Quality attracted entries from major firms like TNT and Rover. In the

USA, the Baldridge Award has been won by firms like Rank Xerox. If they take TQM

seriously, through following the guidelines of quality awards, Indian firms can also learn

the lessons from them.