Success factors for total qualty management: A comparative study of manufacturing and service sectors

Abstract

Total Quality Management is an integrative management philosophy aimed at continuously improving the performance of products, processes and services to achieve and surpass customer expectations. It is very essential for the service as well as manufacturing based organizations to identify key critical success factors, which could be given special attention for ensuring successful implementation of TQM program, in this dynamic competitive environment. Critical Success Factors (CSFs) may be internal or external factors that can seriously affect the firm for better or worse. They provide an early warning system for management so that both the opportunities and threats prevalent in the environment can be taken adequate care of by the organizations. The paper attempts to understand the concept of TQM in both industry sectors (manufacturing and services) and deals with identifying the significant differences (if any) in TQM practices in Indian service and manufacturing organizations based on critical success factors. Seven critical factors (Customer focus, Continuous Improvement, Team work and Involvement, Top management Commitment and Recognition, Training and Development, Communication in Company, Measurement and feedback) that influence the TQM success in industry are determined with the help of extensive literature review.The paper supports that there is a significant difference in the ranking of critical factors of TQM in manufacturing and service industries. Further, the manufacturing sector associates higher importance to the critical factors while the service sector provides higher importance to customer consideration and satisfaction parameters.