Tqm and Qfd and Purchasing

The research “The role of Purchasing and Materials Management and Customer Satisfaction,” by Joseph R. Carter and Ram Narasimhan, talks about issues that should be addressed by the purchasing organizations to achieve TQM objectives. According to some manufacturing executives, it is hard to have a sustainable technology based competitive advantages. Focusing more on quality and customer satisfaction would be the real source of advantage. Having a comprehensive and useful management of supply channel quality would increase manufacturing flexibility, reasonable protection from price competition in finished goods and an advantage in lead-time-based competition. TQM would become a practical competitive strategy if the company invests more in customer service improvement side. The Profit Impact of Market Strategy (PIMS) data has proven that in long term quality is the main key factor in evaluating business unit’s performance. On the other hand, in short term, an increase in quality measures would lead to more profitable business and more productivity. The study was conducted in phases. The first phase of the study was the creation of an ad-hoc committee of senior executives in purchasing and materials management. Their job was to advise and guide the investigators throughout the research. The second phase was an experimental study of the role of purchasing in TQM and customer satisfaction. The last phase involved a comprehensive survey that was sent to purchasing personnel at all levels within organizations spanning several classifications of industry group. More than 56% of the survey respondents were from manufacturing and around 43% were nonmanufacturing industries. More than 75% of the responses came from companies with international scope. There were more manufacturing firms with international scope than nonmanufacturing firms. The respondents were divided into three groups; high tech, medium tech, and low tech. Single sourcing approach was examined and it turned...