LITERATURE SURVEY

After an exhaustive study of reference papers listed in references following

literature survey is done. Over the last thirty years, many researchers have
discussed for the inferior quality of U.S. products and have recommended
improvement prescription such as management leadership, product quality
planning, customer focus and shop floor quality control. Some conceptual
base was also developed to better explain the superior operational
performance of firms that incorporated quality into their operations. In
addition, the literature is replete with case studies of successful TQM
implementation. These studies span various industries such as automotive,
textile, chemical and banking. Unfortunately , conceptual papers and case
studies, while providing insights into key elements of QM strategies, can not
generalize the prescriptions.

Early empirical studies provide general comparisons of quality management

practices between U.S and Japanese Organizations. These studies concluded
that the Japanese give a very high priority to elements such as top
management commitment, product quality planning, and shop floor quality
control, while the U.S firms focus on inspecting quality. Various aspects of
QM strategies were also presented in more recent imperical articles. For
example, Lassalle’s and Dale Studied the impact of buyer-supplier
relationship on suppliers’ implementation. Modarress and Ansari surveyed
the use of various quality control techniques in U.S. firms. Ebrahimpour and
withers compared the involvement of shop floor employees in QM
implementation in Japanese firms operating in the U.S. and U.S. firms.
Empirical research has also focused on the relationship between various
quality management elements and the performance. For example,
Schroeder, Sakakibara, Flynn, and Flynn compared the QM strategies of
Japanese transplants in the U.S. with the U.S. manufacturing plants. Roth and
Miller discussed success factors in the manufacturing firms. Benson, Saraph
and Schroeder reported on the first empirical efforts to analyse the effect of
an organizations quality background on its actual quality performance.
However, these empirical; studies did not identify and validate thr QM
constructs, nor did they analyse the relationships among the constructs.

As mentioned earlier. Anderson et al. have made the only known effort to
develop the theoretical foundations of quality management practice. They
examined Deming’s 14 points and deciphered seven major concepts through
a Delphi Study. With the help of the literature from organizational behavior
and scientific management theory, they prospered various relationships
among the identified concepts. While this approach is valuable in
rationalizing the prescriptions laid down in Deming’s Method ,it may not lead
to a generic theory of quality management. Individual participants in the
Delphy technique may have different perceptions of a specific quality
approach(Such as Demings Philosophy).Quality management is a key factor
in gaining competitive advantage. Much has been written about how quality
should be managed in an organization. Juran discussed three basic
differences of Quality Management. Demings recommended 14 principles of
effectively managing the quality in the Organisation. Corsby prescribed the
14- step zero-defect quality improvement programme for the organization.
Mondon and fiegenbaum described the concept of organization-wide total
quality control.

These authors and others repeatedly discussed the importance of such

critical factors as top management leadership for quality, employee
involvement in quality, employee training and supplier quality management.

Several studies has been conducted to examine the quality management

practices in different countries. These international quality studies used a
survey questionnaire categorized in different sections. Two common features
were noticed in these studies. First, no rationale was provided for the
selection of factors included; and second, reliability and validity tests were
very minimal.

One another major study that provided a highly reliable and valid instrument
of quality measurement has been by Parsuraman et al. they developed a
methodology for measuring service quality that they called SERVQUAL. The
instrument has been applied extensively in many service areas. The
instruments could be applied to service institutions only. In addition, these
instrument measures the perceptions of “customers” as to the current level
of service provided and the extent to which future potential existed for
service improvement.

Other studies attempted to provide manufacturing managers with a

structured framework linking customers perceptions to important firm–
specific quality measures. However, they neither provide a clear instrument,
nor explain how to do it. They propose measures of overall organizational
quality management for both manufacturing and service firms. They
provided a synthesis of quality literature by identifying eight critical factors
of quality management in a business unit.