PAK ELECTRON LIMITED (PEL)

Pak Electron Limited (PEL)

Pak Electron Limited (PEL)

PROJECT TITLE:

Quality management in manufacturing industry: A case study of PEL.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

The word 'quality' has varied meanings attached to it, and the focus varies from one organization to the other (Sitalakshmi, 2007). In accordance with a stream of literature, quality definition may more appropriately rely on the type of organization researchers are studying. Due to improving quality can make a firm has greater market share and return on investment, lower manufacturing costs, improved productivity and improved strategic performance (Zhang, 2000), organizations nowadays emphasize continuous quality improvement; meanwhile, the concept of TQM also arises.

TQM is a management style based on producing quality service as defined by the customer, or based on achieving an organizational strategic imperative through continuous process improvement (Tseng et al., 2007). TQM is a set of management methods and tools focused on providing superior value to the customer through the identification of customers' expressed and latent needs, responsiveness to changing markets, as well as on improving the efficiency of the processes that produce the product or service (Kenneth & Cynthia, 2004). Current definitions and TQM frameworks remain unclear (Daniel & Amrik, 2004; Rungtusanatham et al., 2004). TQM has also been seen as an effective resource that can be employed to peruse competitive performance measures other than quality, including innovation (Daniel & Amrik, 2004). Therefore, in Taiwan, a growing number of industries have devoted to improve their overall quality to acquire more market share and develop competitive advantages. Importantly, traditional manufacturing industry once the most profitable industry in Taiwan, due to its competitive advantages decreasing, top managers of this industry are trying to find ways to survive in today's global market.

TQM (Total Quality Management) has been accepted as a structured management process in industry used in order to cope with the changes in the marketplace and to emphasize quality in both products and services (Sitalakshmi, 2007). However, from industry experience, TQM implementation costs a huge amount of time, effort, and money (Sitalakshmi, 2007), although it is a powerful tool to quantify the way a business functions (Keng et al., 2007) in today's manufacturing environment. Related studies have indicated that some organizations are successful in TQM implementation, while some fail (Brigham, 1993; Dooyoung et al., 1998). These studies also demonstrate that the way TQM is implemented is crucial to its long-term success within an organization (Ghobadian & Gallear, 2001). Besides, the advantages of successful implementation of TQM can be numerous (Zhang, 2000); in addition, a great number of quality awards now exist, such as the European Quality Award, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Asia-Pacific Business Excellence Standard, Vietnam Quality Award, QS 9000, and IS 9000 (Dinh & Triros, 2006), which are all trying to play a role in standardizing the overall quality of an organization. Each of these awards has its own focus elements. For the sake of improving overall quality and gain more market share than others, companies are trying their best to meet the requirements ...