The use of quality management systems, tools, and techniques in ISO 9001:2008 certified companies with multidimensional statistics: the Greek case

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of use of quality management systems (QMS) and quality tools/techniques in ISO 9001:2008 certified Greek companies. It also considers the differences between the extent of use of QMS, tools/techniques, the importance of critical success factors (CSFs) for the implementation of a QMS, and other demographic characteristics like size and years of certification. A research project was carried out in 146 Greek companies from all business sectors using the questionnaire technique. The selected companies have been implementing a QMS in accordance with the ISO 9001:2008 standard. Correspondence analysis, a method from the multidimensional statistics field, was mainly used. The findings showed that the use of standards and tools/techniques was low (compared with companies from other countries). On the contrary, the importance the quality assurance managers attributed to CSF was high enough in most of the items-elements. Differences were evident between all the above variables and certain demographics, like years of certification, size, and the implementation of more than one QMS.