An instrument for measuring total quality management implementation in manufacturing-based business units in India

Abstract

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an integrative management philosophy aimed at continuously improving the quality of products and processes to achieve customer satisfaction. The TQM literature is replete with practitioner oriented 'do-everything-right' articles and case studies. There is no complete agreement on operating system elements of TQM. The objective of this paper is to describe an empirical research on the development of an instrument for TQM implementation in business units in India. Through a detailed analysis of the literature, this research identified 150 measures of quality management. After a pre-test, 111 measures were used to develop a questionnaire. These items were empirically tested by data collected from 50 respondents. A factor analysis uncovered ten underlying dimensions of TQM with a total of 106 items. These factors and items were found to be reliable and valid.