Role of senior management in TQM implementation in Malaysian small and medium enterprises

Abstract

During the last two decades, quality had become a very important issue in many large organisations for both industrial and service sectors. They regard quality as a formidable weapon in addressing business competition and challenges both from local and global competitors. At present, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) had also joint the bandwagon in their effort to improve their products and services quality. One of the bold step taken by SMEs involved in the automotive components manufacturing sector to improve their product and service quality and hence their overall competitiveness in the open market is by implementing Total Quality Management (TQM). SMEs’ main objectives in implementing TQM in their organisations are to ensure their products manufactured or services provided shall satisfy their customers’ requirements and needs. This paper presents a survey conducted to identify the level of SMEs senior managements’ awareness and their attitude towards implementing TQM activities. In this study, one important aspect of TQM that is “senior management responsibilities and involvement in providing top-down short and long term support” was used as a parameter to identify their level of awareness and attitude towards the importance of implementing TQM in SMEs.