Title: Quality management practices in a rice mill located in a cluster: a case study

Authors: Amrendra Kumar Singh; Rakesh L. Shrivastava

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Manoharbhai Patel College of Engineering and Technology, Kudwa, Gondia, Maharashtra, 441614, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Y.C. College of Engineering, Nagpur, Maharashtra, 441110, India

Abstract: A geographically proximate group of rice mills, supporting companies, suppliers, and institutions in an appropriate business environment are emerging as a concept to make rice mills more competitive. The important question is how effectively these rice mills are implementing the various components of total quality management in the absence of a total quality management programme. In this study an attempt is made to investigate the quality management practices in the rice mills operating within a cluster. The location of rice mills in an industrial cluster make us think about those factors which emerges due to cluster initiative, and these factors appear to have potential to contribute in quality management of rice mills. Therefore, we also investigate the role of cluster initiative in quality management so as to fill a research gap left in earlier studies. We found that cluster initiative contributes in quality management of rice mills. The concept of the current study is drawn from two streams of research, i.e., industrial cluster, and quality management literatures.

Keywords: total quality management; TQM; rice mills; industry clusters; quality initiatives; small businesses; small firms.

DOI: 10.1504/IJQI.2013.057005

International Journal of Quality and Innovation, 2013 Vol.2 No.2, pp.120 - 137

Published online: 19 Jul 2014 *

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