This article reports on the main barriers that hinder the development of an effective buyer‐supplier relationship in quality management. The findings are based on questionnaire data obtained from 300 United Kingdom‐based suppliers to 3 major customers in the automotive industry, and on fieldwork carried out in buyer and supplier organizations. The barriers identified include poor communication and feedback, supplier complacency, buyers having poorly defined and unstructured supplier quality improvement programs, the credibility of buyers as perceived by their suppliers, and misconceptions regarding purchasing power.
Describes six levels of TQM adoption (or lack of it) which are termed uncommitted, drifters, tool pushers, improvers, award winners and world-class. The levels are not necessarily the stages which organizations pass on their TQM journey, rather they are characteristics and behaviour which organizations display in relation to TQM at one point in time. Finds that the levels can be used as a positioning model to aid organizations in identifying their weaknesses and help them in taking the next steps forward in the continual challenge of continuous improvement. The characteristics underpinning the six levels are also helpful in highlighting different perceptions of progress at different levels of the organization, with respect to continuous improvement. Argues that the characteristics of the more advanced adoptions should provide the requisite inspiration to those less advanced to highlight the type of issues to which attention needs to be given.
There is an extensive research literature on servitisation and the related field of product service systems that has emerged independently from different fields including engineering, management, design and environmental studies. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a structured literature review to explore, identify and synthesise the multidisciplinary research challenges in the journey towards servitisation. The research approach is a systematic literature review using key word searches and citation tracking for research reported between 1990 and 2013 in research databases that cover the fields which have generated the body of knowledge. One of the key findings from the extant literature on servitisation is that it suffers from three fundamental weaknesses. First, numerous studies are conceptual in nature with limited practicality. Second, there are relatively few empirical studies, and often the findings relate to a single case study based on the insights of a limited number of senior managers. Third, often the dynamics are insufficiently studied in these organisations because data for most cases are collected post-event. Based on the literature review and its shortfalls, this paper proposes a holistic framework of eight themes that require further attention from academic researchers in order that a more complete conceptual understanding of servitisation is developed to support practice.
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