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Introduction

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an enhancement to the traditional way of doing business. It

is proven technique to guarantee survival in world-class competition. Individuals differ radically

from one another in the degree to which they are willing and able to express their emotions. The

people belief TQM is too abstract with many definitions and a lack of hard requirements by

Coleman and Douglas (2003). Vouzas and Psyhogios (2007) who says that TQM definitions a

reference is made to its soft and hard side. The soft side is associated with management

concepts and principles such as leadership, employee empowerment and culture, while the

hard side refers to quality improvement tools and techniques.

Objective

1)

To study the simultaneous impact of soft and hard TQM elements.

2)

To study the result of soft and hard TQM elements.

3)

To determine the relationship between soft and hard TQM elements.

Theoretical background

TQM state for typical quality elements substantial and will not accomplish in short period of

time. Small companies will be able to make the transformation in a much faster time period than

larger companies.

QUALITY ELEMENT` TQM

Definition Customer-oriented

Priorities First among equals of service and cost

Decision Long term

Emphasis Prevention

Errors System

Responsibility Everyone

Problem solving Teams

Procurement Life-cycle costs

Table 1.0 TQM cultural


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Quality and productivity are not mutually exclusive. Improvements in quality lead directly to

increased productivity and other benefits. TQM is not something that will occur overnight. There

are no quick remedies. It takes long time to build the appropriate emphasis and techniques into

the culture.

Figure 1.0 Scope of the TQM activity

TQM

PRINCIPLE AND

PRACTICES (SOFT)

LEADERSHIP

CUSTOMER

SATISFACTION

EMPLOYEE

INVOLVEMENT

CONTINUOUSIMPROVEMENT

SUPPLIER

PARTNERSHIP

PERFORMANCE

MEASURES

TOOLS AND

TECHNIQUES (HARD)

QUANTITATIVE

STATISTICAL

PROCESS CONTROL

(SPC)

ACCEPTANCE

SAMPLING

RELIABILITY

EXPERIMENTAL

DESIGN

FAILURE MODE AND

EFFECT ANALYSIS

(FMEA)

QUALITY FUNCTION

DEPLOYMENT (QFD)

NON QUANTITATIVE

ISO 9000

ISO 14000

BENCHMARKING

TOTAL PRODUCTIVE

MAINTENANCE

MANAGEMENT

TOOLS

CONCURRENT

ENGINEERING


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Lagrosen and Lagrosen (2005) found that the use of quality management models is related to

well functioning quality management and models such as ISO 9000, Swedish Quality Award and

European Quality Award were found to be the most important but Tari (2005) indicated that the

weaknesses in ISO 9000 certified firms were human aspects such as work teams, suggestions

schemes, recognition models and the use of quality techniques and tools. Ahmed et al. (2005)

concluded that the success of any quality management system depends greatly on the strong

commitment of top management and how customers are valued.

-SOFT TQM-

LEADERSHIP

- Senior management must recognize that the quality function is no more responsible for product

quality than the finance function is responsible for profit and loss. Quality, like cost and service,

is the responsibility of everyone in the corporation, especially the Chief Executive Officer

(CEO). When a commitment to quality is made, it becomes part of the corporations business

strategy and leads to enhanced profit and an improved competitive position.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

TQM implies an organization obsession with meeting or exceeding customer satisfactions, to the

point that customers are delighted. Understanding customers needs and expectations in essential

to winning new business and keeping existing business.

EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

Involving people in a quality-improvement program is an effective technique to improve the

quality. Management commitment, annual quality improvement, education and training, project

teams, and so forth, are all effective in utilizing the human resources of an organization. People

must come to work not only to do their job, but also to think about how to improve their job.

People must be empowered to perform processes in an optimum manner at the lowest possiblelevel.

CONTINUOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

The goal is to achieve perfection by continuous improving the business and production

processes. Perfection is an elusive goal, however must continually strive for its attainment.


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SUPPLIER PARTNERSHIP

The supplier should be treated as an extension of the production process. The supplier should

make positive contribution to design, production, and cost reduction. In order to reduce

inventories, many companies are using Just-In-Time (JIT). For JIT to be effective, the supplier

quality must be excellent, and the supplier must reduce the set-up time.

PERFORMANCE MEASURES

Effective management requires information obtained from the measurement of activities.

Performance measures are necessary as a baseline to identify potential projects, to justify project

resource allocation and to assess the improvement results.

-HARD TQM

-

STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL (SPC)

SPC is comprised of seven tools: Pareto diagram, cause and effect diagram, check sheets,

process flow diagram, scatter diagram, histogram, and control charts.

ACCEPTANCE SAMPLING

With the increased emphasis on the use if SPC as evidence of conformance to quality

requirements, the need for acceptance sampling has declined.

RELIABILITY

Reliability is the probability that a product will perform its intended function satisfactorily for a

prescribed life under certain stated environment condition. Four factors associated with

reliability: numerical value, intended function, life and environmental condition.

DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT (DOE)

The objective to determine those variables in a process or product that are critical parameters

their target values. By using formal experimental techniques, the effect of many variables can be

studied at one time. Changes to the process or product are introduced in a random fashion or by

carefully planned, high structured experiments.


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FAILURE MODE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS (FMEA)

FMEA is an analytical technique (a paper test) that combines the technology and experience of

people in identifying foreseeable failure modes of a product or process and planning for an its

elimination.

QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT (QFD)

QFD is a system that identifies and sets the priorities for product and process improvement

opportunities that lead to increased customer satisfaction. Others QFD improves those processes

necessary to provide goods and service that meet or exceed customer expectations.

ISO 9000

ISO 9000 is a standardized Quality Management System (QMS). The benefits of an effective

QMS are improved quality and productivity, reduction in customer audits, world-wide

recognition and credibility, increased access to domestic and world-wide markets, and reduced

risk of product liability litigation.

ISO 14000

ISO 14000 is the international standard for an Environment Management System (EMS). It

provides organization with the EMS elements which can be integrated into other management

systems to help achieve environmental and economic goals.

BENCHMARKING

Benchmarking forces constant testing of internal processes against industrysbest practices. It

promotes teamwork by directing attention to business practices as well as production to remain

competitive.

TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE (TPM)

TPM is a technique that utilizes the entire work force to obtain the optimum use of equipment.

There is a continuous search to improve maintenance activities. Emphasis is placed on an

interaction between operators and maintenance to maximize up-time.


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SEVEN MANAGEMENT AND PLANNING TOOLS

Most of these tools have their roots in post World War II operations research work and in the

work leaders of the Japanese total quality control movement of the 1970s. They are affinity

diagram, interrelationship diagram, tree diagram, prioritization matrices, matrix diagram, process

decision program chart, and activity network diagram.

CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

Concurrent engineering is the practice of using a multidisciplinary team to conduct product

conception, design and production planning at one time. The major benefits are faster product

development, shorter time to market, better quality, less work in process, and increased

productivity.

METHODOLOGY

Respondents

Empirical data were drawn from 370 Greek companies using the questionnaire method. Asked

questions are based on the impact of soft and hard TQM elements on quality management

results.

Method of studies

The model reliability and validity was examined through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, while

the relationships between soft and hard TQM elements and quality management results were

examined through Structural Equation Modelling.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

In statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is a special form of factor analysis, most

commonly used in social research. It is used to test whether measures of a construct are

consistent with a researcher's understanding of the nature of that construct (or factor). As such,


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the objective of confirmatory factor analysis is to test whether the data fit a hypothesized

measurement model. This hypothesized model is based on theory and/or previous analytic

research.

In confirmatory factor analysis, the researcher first develops a hypothesis about what factors s/he

believes are underlying the measures s/he has used and may impose constraints on the model

based on these a priori hypotheses. By imposing these constraints, the researcher is forcing the

model to be consistent with his/her theory. Model fit measures could then be obtained to assess

how well the proposed model captured the covariance between all the items or measures in the

model. If the constraints the researcher has imposed on the model are inconsistent with the

sample data, then the results of statistical tests of model fit will indicate a poor fit, and the model

will be rejected. If the fit is poor, it may be due to some items measuring multiple factors. It

might also be that some items within a factor are more related to each other than others.

Structural Equation Modelling

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal

relations using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions.

Structural Equation Models (SEM) allows both confirmatory and exploratory modeling, meaning

they are suited to both theory testing and theory development. Confirmatory modeling usually

starts out with a hypothesis that gets represented in a causal model. The concepts used in the

model must then be operationalized to allow testing of the relationships between the concepts in

the model. The model is tested against the obtained measurement data to determine how well the

model fits the data. The causal assumptions embedded in the model often have falsifiable

implications which can be tested against the data.


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Instruments

Questionnaires

A research was carried out in Greek companies through questionnaires. Based on the above

mentioned soft and hard TQM elements, a questionnaire was designed that was reviewed by

quality management academics and professionals and tested through a pilot study on 23 ISO

9001:2000 certified companies. The final questionnaire consisted of four parts. The first part

contained questions about the companies profile and the second part questions about soft

TQM elements. The questions of the third part concerned the results related to customers,

employees, society and the company itself (internal and external). Finally, the fourth part

contained questions using respective quality management tools and techniques. The answers

were given on a seven-point scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was applied to assess

measurement model reliability and validity. The relationships between latent constructs were

examined through Structural Equation Modeling. The SPSS 15 and AMOS six statistical

packages were used for data processing.

Sample

Given that the ISO 9001:2000 standard is much more in line with TQM than other quality

standards, the criterion for selecting the companies that would participate in the study was their

certification to this standard. The only available and formal source informing data about the ISO

9000 certified Greek companies was ICAP, the largest business information and consulting firm

in Greece. According to its database, the ISO 9001:2000 certified companies in Greece during

the research period were 1720. The questionnaire was sent to all these companies and was

addressed to the quality manager. In total, 370 questionnaires were returned fully completed.

Comparing the 370 companies that participated in the research with the 1350 companies that did

not, in terms of the number of employees, head office location and their sector (manufacturing,

commercial, service industry), no statistically significant differences were detected. From this it

is concluded that the responded companies were not different from the remaining ISO 9001:2000

certified companies (non-responded) with respect to their profile.


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Testing the assumptions of multivariate analysis

Before multivariating data analysis, we should check the assumptions regarding sample size, the

scale of variables, their multicollinearity, their multivariate normal distribution and outliers. As

far as sample size is concerned, it exceeds 300 cases and is regarded satisfactory for analyses

through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). According to Garson (2007) and Byrne (2001),

we can use Likert scale data and apply the Maximum Likelihood Estimation method in SEM,

given that we have a large sample, a seven-point Likert scale and the skewness and kurtosis of

variables is within acceptable limits, a fact that suggests distribution symmetry. The

multicollinearity among independent variables was excluded after controls were held, according

to Kline (2005) and Hair et al. (2005), on their correlations (r< 0:85) and the multiple regression

analysis of every independent variable with all the others (R2< 0:9, Tolerance =1 R

2> 0:1,

Variance Inflation Factor = 1/[1-R2] < 10, Condition Index < 30). According to Hair et al.

(2005), the outliers were identified from a univariate and multivariate perspective (Mahalanobis

D2/independent variables < 3) and were excluded from the analysis. As far as multivariate

normal distribution is concerned and according to Hair et al. (2005), there are no serious

indications that it is violated (histograms, p-p and q-q plots, skewness and kurtosis < 1,

standardized residuals < 2:5). Therefore, it can be suggested that these basic assumptions are

not violated.


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RESULT

Exploring the TQM literature, the following quality management results are referred: customer

satisfaction, employee satisfaction, impact on society and internal and external business results.

The study proved that quality improvement and the consolidation of the companys market

position are influenced mainly by adopting soft TQM elements and secondarily hard TQM

elements. Results also showed that both aspects of TQM play a significant role in gaining

benefits from the quality management system, both inside and outside the business environment.

Companiesprofile

The majority of the companies that participated in the research were small-medium enterprises

(250 employees), two or three of them were manufacturing having years of experience in quality

assurance, since most of them were certified to the standards of the ISO 9000:1994 series. The

selection of the certification body and the external quality consultant, on whose support 75 per

cent of the companies relied to become certified, was made using their reputation in the market

as the primary criterion and not so much on financial grounds. Finally, a rate of 62 per cent of

the companies expressed the wish to implement a quality management system in accordance

with TQM principles in the future.

From the collected data, it is obvious that soft and hard TQM elements have both a direct

and indirect impact on the quality management results. More specifically, quality improvement

is influenced mainly by soft TQM elements and secondarily by hard TQM elements.

Customer satisfaction is influenced mainly by quality improvement and secondarily by soft

TQM elements. Market benefits are influenced mainly by customer satisfaction and

secondarily by hard TQMelements.

Therefore, it can be concluded that quality management results are significantly influenced

mainly by soft TQM elements and secondarily by hard TQM elements. In other words, the

research hypothesis, that is soft and hard TQM elements affect the results of adopting a

quality management system, is not rejected.

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