This issue contains detailed analysis of some of the fundamental concepts of quality management. We start with “Proposing a Compact Instrument to Measure Supplier-Customer Relationships in the Context of TQM Activities,” by Mohammad Aghdasi and Hamid Noori of the Laurier Business School of Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. They developed a brief yet comprehensive instrument for measuring supplier-customer relationships, based on the data they gathered from 205 Canadian manufacturing plants. Using principale components analysis, they determined that there were three important factors. Improvement activities focus on customers that work with suppliers to encourage them to use continuous improvement, process improvement, and assessment of job satisfaction, as well as developing employee involvement initiatives. Long-term purchasing emphasizes the development of a small number of key suppliers, use of internal or external certification of supplier quality improvement programs, and systematic collection of data on supplier process control and capability. Market adjustment includes activities related to cross-functional teams of suppliers for planning and sharing market and demand information and on-site personnel from supplier organizations. Although they determined that each of these three constructs was important in supplier-customer relationships, they also determined that each could benefit from improvement in the plants in their sample, particularly improvement activities.
The second article looks at the use of quality management in government. Although quality management has been used widely in manufacturing and to a lesser extent in service organizations, there are still many public-sector opportunities for the application of quality management principles. Tom Foster of Boise State University, Larry Howard of Middle Tennessee State University, and Patrick Shannon of Boise State University, investigate the use of quality management principles and tools in a city government in “The Role of Quality Tools in Improving Satisfaction with Government.” They studied 659 employees in 11 departments in a city government, including the fire department, mayor’s office, parks department, and traffic court. They collected data on contextual variables, including leadership and teamwork, enabler variables, such as quality tools knowledge and quality tools application, and outcome variables, including process improvement. In addition, they conducted focus groups in each of the 11 departments, to help validate their statistical findings. They found strong support for the model they proposed, with leadership and teamwork important contextual variables.
V. M. Rao Tummala of Eastern Michigan University, K.S. Chin of the City University of Hong Kong, and W.K. John Leung of Motorola Semiconductors HK Ltd., present the findings of their detailed study of the concept of the cost of poor quality in “An Activity-Based Costing Model to Reduce COPQ.” Although the cost of poor quality has long been an important factor in documenting the complete cost of quality, Tummala, Chin, and Leung incorporate the use of activity-based costing into the calculation of the cost of poor quality. They propose a three-phase program for using ABC costing to help highlight the parts of the process that contribute the most to the cost of poor quality, illustrating their approach with a case study involving analog integrated circuit test operations. They found that this approach is a cost-effective means for driving continuous improvement efforts in an organization, because the focus of ABC costing on the process helps employees determine where to focus their improvement efforts.
We close with an article that develops a comprehensive instrument for assessing quality management practices in an organization. It is used to compare quality management practices at different levels in the supply chain. Christopher Roethlein, Paul Mangiameli, and Maling Ebrahimpour of the University of Rhode Island, present their findings in “Quality in U. S. Manufacturing Industries: An Empirical Study.” The list of concepts studied came from their thorough review of the literature on quality management, and preliminary versions of the instrument were pilot tested at Pratt & Whitney and its tier one and tier two suppliers. They studied 634 U. S. manufacturing plants, finding that there were no differences in the implementation of quality management practices between base-level suppliers, subcomponent suppliers, component suppliers, major component suppliers, and end-product producers. The similarities in quality management between levels of the supply chain should provide for ease of communication about quality management issues between supply-chain levels.
Barbara B. Flynn
Editor
Quality Management Journal
EDITORIAL
EDITOR
Barbara B. Flynn
Wake Forest UniversityPAST EDITOR
George S. Easton
Emory UniversityFOUNDING EDITOR
PUBLISHER
William A. Golomski
BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
James B. Kohnen
St. Mary’s College of California
William Tony
MANUSCRIPT COORDINATOR
David Nelsen
COPY EDITORS
Leigh Ann Klaus
Kris McEachern
PRODUCTION
Cathy Schnackenberg
DIGITAL PRODUCTION SPECIALISTS
Jen Czajka
Jill ZimmermanHTML CODING
Jill ZimmermanEDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
John Anderson
University of Minnesota
Selwyn Becker
University of Chicago
Robert E. Cole
University of California
James W. Dean, Jr.
University of North Carolina
James R. Evans
University of Cincinnati
John P. Evans
University of North Carolina
Frank M. Gryna
University of Tampa
John Hamburg
APEX, Inc.
David Luther
Luther Quality Associates
Ram Narasimhan
Michigan State University
Roger G. Schroeder
University of Minnesota
Kalyan Singhal
University of Baltimore
Michael J. Stahl
University of TennesseeEDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD
Sanjay Ahire
University of Dayton
Susan D. Amundson
Arizona State University
Kimberly A. Bates*
University of Toronto
Paul M. Bobrowski
Syracuse University
Kenneth Boyer
Michigan State University
Kenneth E. Case
Oklahoma State University
Injazz Chen
Cleveland State University
Barrie Dale*
University of Manchester
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Georgia State University
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University of Arkansas
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Arizona State University
Edward Duplaga
Bowling Green State University
Susan West Engelkemeyer
Babson College
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Miami University
Mark P. Finster
University of Wisconsin
Laura Forker
University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth
Soumen Ghosh
Georgia Institute of Technology
Glenn H. Gilbreath
Virginia Commonwealth University
John M. Groocock*
TRW (Retired)
Robert Handfield
North Carolina State University
Sandra J. Hartman
University of New Orleans
Marilyn Helms
Dalton State College
Mary Collins Holcomb
University of Tennessee
Ann Jordan
University of North Texas
Gary Kern
Indiana University South Bend
Jill Phelps Kern
Digital Semiconductor
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Aberdeen University
Ray A. Klotz
Qualcomm Inc.
Frank Knight
FISI Madison Financial
Ronald D. Kurtzmann
Diamond Management Systems
Keong Leong
Ohio State University
A. Magid Mazen
Suffolk University
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University of Memphis
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North Georgia College and State University
Henry R. Neave*
British Deming Association
Yoram Neumann
California State University
William Newman
Miami University
Gary Ragatz
Michigan State University
Gipsie B. Ranney
Belmont University
Richard N. Rosett
Rochester Institute of Technology
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Wake Forest University
Helmut Schneider
Louisiana State University
Nirmal Sethia
California State Polytechnic University
John G. Surak
Clemson University
William Tallon
Northern Illinois University
Michael D. Tveite
The Tetrad Group
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Ohio State University
L. David Weller
University of Georgia
Ted Weston
Colorado State University
*International reviewer
