| Abstract | Competition in the world market has increased rapidly and constantly, causing
companies to adapt their management and strategies in order to survive. Total Quality
Management, which has been accepted globally, is one choice because it can play a key role.
Though its main purpose is to make sustainable profit for the organization, the styles of
implementation differ among companies for many reasons such as business characteristics,
organizational culture and nationality.
Thus, in this study, the attempts are devoted to conduct the establishment of a TQM
program based on ISO 9000 standard, which can be considered as the first step to TQM in
footwear manufacturing. First of all, status of the quality system prior to the beginning of the
implementation process has been described in details. Major organizational changes which
the company has to make so as to meet the requirements of the standard, and the way in
which the company has addressed 19 modules of ISO 9002 has been discussed. Finally, this
study is also to study the TQM systems implemented in the company and try to suggest some
guidelines following Deming Prize criteria award. The framework includes nine elements -
Policy, Organization, Quality assurance activities, Daily management and improvement
activities, Standardization, Information and data, Effects and Future planning. It is firstly
developed, then check points following the criteria are established. An approach using
scoring procedure for assessing quality management is applied. Three sets of questionnaire
for three different groups of personnel - senior executives, employees and customers - are
created based on the framework.
The surveys were conducted according to the types of questionnaire. Three senior
executives, one hundred and fifty three employees, and fifteen customers gave the responses.
Weights of the elements were estimated by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the
relative importance scores given by senior executives. The quality management practice in
the elements are estimated from their average values. Finally, the practices are analyzed and
discussed element by element. The analysis includes the comparisons of employees' level
and department practices th.rough the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results show that, the company's overall practice is at level of success by a
61.93% normalized score, and indicate some practice differences in both employees' level
and depaitments. The assessment can also identify strengths and weaknesses of the
company's practice in the elements, thereby providing useful information for the company to
make further improvement towards excellence. |