IMPLEMENTATION OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YARN

Abstract

Quality management has emerged with promising organizational performance outcomes around the business world and has brought healthy prospective for the modern era business organizations to meet the challenge of continuous quality improvement to satisfy the customer demands. Organizations are forced to ensure the quality of their products and services to meet the challenges posed by the competition existing in the markets around the globe, growing customers’ awareness of market development, ever- escalating quality demands from customers, and the urge of organizations to strive for winning the competitive edge at marketplace. This dissertation provides the insight of quality management status of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan by addressing the issue of quality management implementation in the industry and its performance outcomes. This dissertation is meant to evaluate that whether the quality management programs, which proved very effective in improving organizational performance in the advanced countries, could be successful in the organizations belonging to developing country like Pakistan. The existing literature of quality management is mostly based on research performed in advanced countries, therefore to contribute to the body of knowledge of quality management in Pakistan this study is conducted in the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The organizational culture, management style, human resources and the managerial perspectives are considered critical factors in defining the success or failure of the quality management programs. Hence, it is worthwhile to appraise the effect of quality management practices in improving the quality of yarn and organizational performance in context of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, which is characterized with a specific organizational culture, management style, human resources, and managerial perspectives. Within this research objective, the research problem was established as “What level of Quality management implementation is achieved by cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, and how much quality management is effective in improving quality of cotton yarn industry?” To address the main research problem, four research activities were planned. The first research activity was to have exhaustive hypothetical and pragmatic knowledge about the concepts, principles, practices, and the issues related to quality management implementation in organizational context. This research activity was imperative to discover quality management approaches to develop a research structure to evaluate the vilevel of implementation of quality management techniques by the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The second research activity was to explore the empirical interrelationship of quality management practices implemented in organizational context of the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The third research activity was to identify the relationship of quality management techniques with the performance measures in the organizational perspectives of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The fourth research activity was to evaluate the effect of implementation of quality management techniques on organizational performance and quality improvement of cotton yarn. To comply with these research activities, main research problem was re-defined into four sub-questions i. What level of adoption of quality management techniques is achieved by the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? ii. How do quality management techniques interrelate in the work environment of the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? iii. How does implementation of quality management techniques link with the performance measures of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? What effect implementation of quality management techniques has on the quality of yarn in the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? In addressing research question 1, the findings of this research show that cotton yarn industry of Pakistan has implemented quality management techniques at a moderate level, and quality management programs are receiving positive response from the industry. In addressing research question 2, the findings of this research show that in the organizational environment of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, all the quality management techniques have significant positive correlation with each other, except the practice of changing the suppliers for their failure in maintaining the promised quality level. In addressing research question 3, the findings of this research show that implementation of quality techniques is positively linked with the organizational performance measures, except for the practice of changing the suppliers for their failure in achieving and maintaining the minimum level of quality, that has negative effect on performance measures. In addressing research question 4, the findings of this research show that in the context of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, the implementation of quality management techniques proved to have a significant positive impact on profitability, market share, sale volume, reduction in rejection rate, and organizational performance.