Critical Factors of total quality management that drive customer satisfaction of manufacturing projects

• Main Author: Yao, Jiyi
• Other Authors: Moon Seung Ki
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Total quality management; Manufacturing industry; Product quality; Customer satisfaction
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174696
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This research investigates how quality management should be implemented in the manufacturing industry to improve the qualities of a product or a project. The topic explores the critical factors that are in total quality management that will in term increase customer’s trust and satisfaction with the projects or product delivered. From the literature reviews, we identify that customers tend to have 2 different market strategies mainly the cost leadership and differentiation approach. For cost leader, companies want to stay relevant in the market by producing cheaper and better the quality of products or projects. While for differentiated companies want to lead the market with new design and out of the market innovations. Total quality management (TQM) framework has 2 types of approaches which are a soft aspect and a hard aspect. The hard aspect focuses on enforcement to get the measurable data such as labor hours, technology and production automation. The soft aspect is the immeasurable and intangible aspects focuses on employee development and company directions. This research finds that soft aspects are the critical factors. And a pilot study is conducted in Applied Materials from the period of May 2023 to Feb 2024 to test out TQM framework. Within the soft aspect there were 11 critical success factors (CSFs) and the top factors identified are top management involvement and KPI setting for employees. The results from the pilot study are favorable to implementation of the TQM framework in manufacturing industry as there is a reducing in quality problems in terms of part failure and non confirmative in projects. Customer satisfaction rating will also high but we find that major customers from USA and Taiwan still focused more on innovation too even though it is still a positive rating.