Total quality management (TQM) is widely accepted as a means of obtaining and sustaining competitive edge. This study finds support for the proposition that TQM implementation correlates with quality performance. Behavioral factors (role of top management leadership, customer focus, human resource focus, and quality focus) as well as TQM tools and techniques (corporate planning, process focus, and information and analysis) contribute to the successful implementation of TQM. Also, the study finds that the size of the company (big or small), the company's adoption of TQM, and the duration of a company's experience with TQM affect the rigor of implementation and the resulting level of quality performance. However, the nature of the company (manufacturing or service) does not seem to have a significant effect on the rigor of quality management implementation and level of quality performance.

This paper focuses on gaining insight into the impact of TQM on the business performance of the service sector of the economy. The study yields clear evidence that TQM implementation improved business performance in the service sector of Singapore. Success of TQM implementations appears to be attributable more to the rigor of its implementation rather than the duration. The study finds that while accrued benefits can be attributed to some of the tools of TQM, such as, customer focus and quality improvement rewards, the key to the success of TQM lies in its intangible and behavioral features such as top management support, employee empowerment and employee involvement.

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Investigates the state of benchmarking in the manufacturing and service sectors of Singapore. Our aim is to understand the state of benchmarking in Singapore as well as the expectations and motivation of non‐benchmarking companies. Our approach to the adoption of benchmarking is to view it as a major organisational change. We seek to understand the many dimensions of the transformation process. In addition, we examine the role of factors such as motivation, objectives, driving force, top management’s commitment, preconditions, process, company culture, employee participation, presence of pitfalls, and the potential benefits in determining the success of a benchmarking project. We identify driving forces, preconditions and effectiveness of implementation as the major facilitators of benchmarking. Also, we establish the importance of these facilitators towards the achievement of benefits and success of benchmarking. Moreover, the study emphasises the importance of preconditions and effectiveness of implementation for the success and benefits of benchmarking.

A system of two parallel queues where the arrivals from a single stream of customers join the shorter queue is considered. Arrivals form a homogeneous Poisson stream and the service times in each of the two queues are independent exponential variates. By treating one of the queues as bounded, the steady‐state probability vector for the system can be expressed in a modified matrix‐geometric form and can be computed efficiently. Computational procedures for the sojourn time distribution and characteristics of the departure stream are developed. Some numerical results are presented, and based on these results an efficient approximation scheme for the model is developed which can be readily extended to systems with more than two parallel queues.