Title: Contribution of quality management and just-in-time production practices to manufacturing performance

Authors: Chi Anh Phan, Yoshiki Matsui

Addresses: International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Business Administration, Yokohama National University, 79-4 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-Ku, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan. ' International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Business Administration, Yokohama National University, 79-4 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-Ku, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan

Abstract: This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis on contribution of quality management (QM) and just-in-time (JIT) production practices to the efficiency and flexibility of manufacturing plants using survey data from 163 manufacturing plants in five countries. Twelve measurement scales were constructed to evaluate different aspects of QM and JIT production practices concerning with process, layout, supplier, training, and scheduling. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique and hierarchical regression were used to test the hypotheses. The results indicated that the high performance plants highly focus on both QM and JIT. In additional, joint implementation of QM and JIT production practices significantly produce a higher level of manufacturing performance when compared to the separate implementation of either one. The findings suggest the plants to explore the linkage and synergy of operational practices to achieve high competitive position in the global market.

Keywords: quality management; QMS; just-in-time; JIT; manufacturing performance; empirical research; manufacturing efficiency; manufacturing flexibility; process; layout; suppliers; training; scheduling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2010.033883

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2010 Vol.6 No.1, pp.23 - 47

Published online: 03 Jul 2010 *

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