The effects of TQM implementation in ISO 9001 certified construction firms

• Main Author: Neyestani, Behnam
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2018
• Subjects: Total quality management; Construction industry; ISO 9001 Standard
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1339
• Institution: De La Salle University

TQM philosophy was first introduced by quality gurus, it is an organization-wide approach considering all crucial factors for producing the products and services with good quality. Indeed, TQM system can be successful to capture its goals with adopting ISO 9001, establishing a proper QMS for processes of an organization. In fact, the construction practitioners and researchers are rarely serious to apply critical TQM practices and ISO 9001 at the same time. Thus, this study designed particularly to identify the effects of a set of TQM CSFs and ISO 9001 solely and conjointly on organizational performance, and also to verify whether ISO 9001 as a TQM tool has a complementary role with TQM in enhancing organizational performance within ISO 9001-certified construction firms belonged to Large-scale and located in Metro Manila, Philippines.To shed more light on these issues, a systematic literature review was carefully done on the context of the study across a lot of sources from databases, which could provide valuable insight on specifying the main concepts of this research. However, the seven most essential TQM practices, ten right KPIs in the basis of BSC, and the mechanism of ISO 9001 were uncovered that are so much important in formulating a successful TQM implementation model. After determining main variables, an initial TQM framework has been made in corresponding with the evidence of the literature body. In order to test the eleven derived hypotheses, representing the interrelationships among TQM CSFs, ISO 9001, and organizational performance (KPIs) in the construction industry.To examine empirically this aforementioned TQM framework, a mono quantitative design based on survey strategy was justifiably selected as an appropriate methodology, and accordingly a survey questionnaire was built to collect data at a particular point in time. A self-administered questionnaire method was enforced, and 172 questionnaires have been sent to the targeted sample, but the only 126 of them with a response rate of 73.3% could be valid and usable for use in statistical data analysis. Also, statistical methods such as descriptive statistics and inferential statistics techniques were applied in analyzing the obtained data using SPSS 17 software.The outcomes of this investigation demonstrated that the implementation of a set of critical TQM practices is not generally performed at a desirable degree in the construction companies. Interestingly, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated that customer focus has the greatest impact on better performance, followed by employee involvement, training, process management, leadership, and supplier quality management. While information and analysis cannot be able to have a significant role in promoting organization's performance. Most importantly, this research found that each of both TQM CSFs implementation and ISO 9001 certification has meaningfully a positive contribution on organizational performance, and provide noticeable benefits in the construction context. It is worth to bear in mind that TQM possesses better outcomes and much broader approach than ISO 9001 in an organization. Overall, the enhanced performance can be significantly obtained by performing the combination of a set of six TQM CSFs and ISO 9001 as a whole at very high level, and the absence of contradiction between them, has suggested to use and integrate these quality management programs for achieving superior performance at all aspects of the construction firms. Finally, based on enough evidence, an optimal TQM model is developed with the six most critical TQM and ISO 9001 as enabling criteria, and a set of ten right KPIs (BSC) as result criteria, providing the overall guidance for pursuing performance excellence at project and enterprise levels in the construction industry.