Total Quality Management for Micro-businesses in the Manufacturing Industry

Diploma Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Engineering - Industrial Engineering and Management, grade: 1,7, Technical University of Berlin (Wirtschaft und Management), course: Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement, language: English, abstract: Purpose Quality management models such as ISO 9001:2000 or excellence awards serve as quality guides for large and medium-sized organizations. There is nothing similar in the field for micro-businesses, i.e. businesses up to 20 employees. This thesis aims to lay down the foundation for a large-scale field study. The study shall unveil which areas of a company are essential to be addressed by a basic Quality Management System in order to optimize competitiveness, customer satisfaction and business results. The desired result of the study is to be able to make recommendations for an ideal total Quality Management System for micro-businesses in the manu-facturing industry. Design/Methodology/Approach Based on an extensive literature review on quality management in small businesses and micro-businesses, criteria of quality awards and TQM practices in general, a framework was developed, called Micro TQM for Micro-businesses Framework similar to those of famous quality awards, such as the MBNQA or the EFQM Award . Supported by experts from Stevens Institute of Tech-nology (Hoboken, NJ), industry associations, and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, a questionnaire was developed for a subsequent field study. Findings First of all the Micro TQM for Micro-businesses Framework has been created based on a literature review. The other output of this thesis is the quality man-agement questionnaire whose sections are linked to the elements of the framework. The questionnaire is made to test six hypotheses about cause-and-effect relations in the model. The main-hypothesis of this thesis is: Companies that focus their quality effort proactively on prevention of non-conformances excel in customer satisfaction which leads to superior overall performance. Subsequent steps of the study will need to corroborate the hypotheses.