建筑行业全面质量管理外文文献翻译2024-2024

建筑行业全面质量管理外文翻译2024-2024 英文

The Total Quality Management (TQM) journey of Malaysian building

contractors

Idris Othman, Siti Ghani, Shim Woon Choon

Abstract

Malaysian Government has announced that for construction industry to transform by 2024, quality in construction is needed to be improved. Total Quality Management (TQM) could facilitate this motive. Thus, the purpose of this research is to identify, rank and analyze the factors affecting TQM implementation in a construction company so that industrial practitioners avoid poor quality products. A case study concept was used and a questionnaire survey was collected from 32 respondents. The reliability test was conducted using Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient. Employee related factor was identified to be the most crucial factors affecting TQM implementation. Contractor group of respondents showed excellent level of internal consistency (overall reliability) with the validation value of 0.956 using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. In conclusion this research able to give a series of recommendation and a clear quality management which can be followed by the industry practitioners to ensure that Total Quality Management can be implemented.

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Keywords: Total Quality Management, Construction, Contractor, Malaysia

Introduction

Construction sector plays a critical part in the economy of Malaysia seeing its contribution in capital formation, employment creation and revenue generation which bolster the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the financial advancement of Malaysia. Economic Performance Fourth Quarter 2024, Malaysia’s economy growth accelerates to 4.7% with construction being sector being one of the main contributors. Construction is as fourth key contributors to the economic growth with 2.6% contributions to the GDP after Services, Manufacturing and Agriculture as shown in Table.

Despite the growth and construction industry contribution to national GDP, the performance of the projects are not fully satisfied by many clients. Sustainable quality improvement is hardly achieved because of the construction quality management setting is loosely structured. However, Harrington, Voehl and Wiggin suggested otherwise. They narrated Teixeira in their studies that by referring to main guidelines, anybody has a great freedom to develop solution for TQM. Therefore, organization should develop framework with consideration of their managers’ view of Quality Management (QM). However, many contractors are not motivated to improve quality in their projects and

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organization. In order to improve quality issues faced by the contractors, TQM is suggested to be implemented in construction setting.

In January 1st, 2009, all Grade G7 contractors has been made compulsory to be certified with the ISO 9000 Quality Management System by Construction Industrial Development Board (CIDB). Failure to do so, the companies will be downgraded, which effect their business activities. In order to overcome problems such as inferior quality of construction materials, building defects, construction delays, high accident rates and environmental impact issues, many contractors have started ISO certification. In the last four decades, TQM has achieved improvement in term of continuous improvement in the system of holistic management. TQM has been proved very successful in many industries especially manufacturing sector. Therefore, by integrating TQM into contractor’s system of management will improve the problems of quality. Likita et al found that when TQM is fully implemented, processes in construction sector will be controlled in much better. In Malaysia’s construction industry context, few studies have been undertaken related to TQM in term of theories, techniques, concepts, model, framework, implementation, impact, efficiency and performance. However, no evidence is found that there has been statistical research on the actual extent of TQM practiced by building contractors in Malaysia.

Literature review

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This section presents TQM overview by explaining its brief history, definition and principles. Benefits of TQM also will be elaborated to get a feel of what impact it could give to the organizations that decided to adopt it. Author also presents related work on TQM in Malaysian construction environment by recording the strengths and weaknesses of each work and provide the way forward to expand TQM’s body of knowledge in this sector.

Total Quality Management (TQM)? Overview

TQM is the result of evolution in quality. It was started by Walter Shewhart in early 1920s when product quality control was applied with statistical theory. After that in the 1940s led by Americans such as Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and Crosby, the concept was further developed in Japan. The focus widened to quality of all issues within the organization. The four evolutionary phases of quality are inspection, quality control, quality assurances then TQM. TQM is a philosophy to meet quality output satisfying the expectation of customer. Quality level in TQM is determined by customers. Quality standards inclusive of the Deming Prize and the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Awards (MBNQA) ISO 9000 series, specify principles and processes that comprise TQM. Fig sums up eight principles of TQM.

TQM benefits

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TQM benefits should be understand in order to appreciate its importance. For improving competitiveness around the world, TQM has been utilized as an applied process. TQM could boost performance in two ways according to Ghobadian and Ghallear. In short term, TQM via premium pricing could increase profitability. However, TQM could increase market share in the long term. The financial performance and market share can be increased by utilizing the strategic pursuit of quality. TQM also could give positive impact on speed of response, productivity, customer services and quality of product. On top of that, Heltondescribed the impressive financial gains made by most Baldridge Award winners apart from improvement in business performance.

Those firms in construction sector specifically that successfully implemented TQ can reduced workforce rework, workforce, nonconformities, improved overall project schedule and increase of market share. Besides that, TQM in construction industry also proven that company reputation can be increased, considerable market share can be won, and customer delight can be achieved. TQM is a philosophy that delivers long-term benefits. There are many cases showing the successfully implementation of TQM. However, there are also failure cases. Therefore, TQM must be implemented completely.

TQM journey of Malaysia construction industry

Highly interested in Quality Management (QM) activities can be

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