Essential quality practices in Indonesian manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

The importance of quality practices has considerably increased over the last years, on both a practical and theoretical levels. In competitive and global business environment, companies should create a need for managers in manufacturing sector to effectively and continually improve quality, capability and process efficiency. This paper presents the findings from the survey on the current status of fundamental 5-S quality practices and the implementation of total quality management (TQM) in Indonesian SMEs. The aims are to determine whether the essential quality practices such as 5-S quality practices have a significant contribution to the successful TQM implementation and any differences in the implementation of 5-S can be attributed mainly to the maturity of the 5-S programme. This paper outlines the results of the 5-S survey conducted among 36 Indonesian manufacturing SMEs with a total of 78 per cent are applying 5-S in their environment. The main finding from the study proved that 5-S activities provide an essential total quality environment.