Survey of Total Quality Management Practices in Manufacturing and Service Industries

Total quality management (TQM) practices are those few critical factors which are key to successful implementation of TQM in an organization, whether it is manufacturing, service, public or SMEs. Proper application of TQM will improve the business performance of the organization globally, and hence, results in increased competitive advantage. This could only be possible if proper identification of those key TQM practices or critical success factors (CSFs) which are critical for successful application of TQM are made and then implementing all the identified TQM practices effectively. The aim of this paper is to explore the different TQM practices in two different sectors by reviewing the literature on TQM practices followed by manufacturing and service industries. To accomplish this objective, a survey of published research studies on manufacturing industries and on service industries were selected. The studies selected for this purpose focused on the TQM practices used by them. The finding indicates that broadly the same set of identified TQM practices do exist and are applicable to both the sectors. A total of 42 TQM practices in manufacturing industries and 43 for service industries were indicated by these studies. The results of this paper will help managers to implement TQM in their organizations successfully through the use of the common identified TQM practices. Future research can concentrate on refining and further validating the TQM practices developed in this paper by applying it in different manufacturing and service industries