Comparing Quality Management Practices Between Food Industry and Electrical and Electronic Industry

Total quality management (TQM) has withstood the test of time with its progressive and comprehensive long-term approach in organisational management to improve product and service quality. TQM focuses on quality for customers’ satisfaction and concurrently sustains company competitive advantage in today’s challenging and dynamic business environment. All successful organisations adopt TQM in one form or another. TQM has become one of the quality management cornerstones in Malaysia food and electrical and electronic (E&E) industry. This study compares the TQM practices between the food and E&E industry based on a survey conducted in Malaysia. The survey instrument adopted basic and important elements of TQM practices such as leadership, process management, customer focus, supplier focus, human resource management, information management and continuous improvement. A research framework is presented to examine the relationships between the seven basic elements of TQM practices and the organisational operational performances such as customer satisfaction, employee morale, productivity, percentage-defect production volume, and full and on-time delivery to customer. The model was empirically tested with data collected from 90 companies in Malaysia. Results of the comparative study reveal that there are no significant differences between food industry and the E&E industry in terms of TQM practices and organisational performance. This could be due to both these industries are anchored on the
global ISO 9000 standard (a series of standards for quality management systems providing guidance and tools for organisations to achieve the quality objective) making the effects of quality management practices on organisational performance for these two industries common. In both industries, regression analysis indicates that all the seven variables of TQM practices were significant in explaining the variability of organisational performance. This study
highlights the importance of the adoption of TQM practices in both industries in facing future organisational performance challenges especially in this globalised economy. Future study can consider integrating ISO 9000 standards into the study of TQM practices and organisation performance.