Quality practices, priorities and performance: an international study



3.0 Data on Quality practices, priorities and performance

3.1 Quality practices

Country comparisons are shown in Table 1.The scores of the median values for the quality practice indicate
that in all countries firms tend to deploy more resources on corrective maintenance rather than preventive
maintenance (60:40 overall). This is more pronounced among some countries: Argentina, Croatia, Hungary
(30:70) and particularly the Netherlands (25:75). There are few exceptions, namely China, Denmark, Ireland
and Norway, which deploy the same amount of resources on both types of maintenance (50:50). As for
quality costs, the scores of the median values indicate that most of the resources are deployed in inspection
costs (30%), with Croatia, Germany and Spain leading the chart (40% each). Median internal quality costs
were particularly high in Argentina (36%) while external quality costs were high in Sweden (23%). The use
of quality programs in the previous three years was quite low overall (42% firms) although more expected a
high use in the next three years (59%). Quality action programs were particularly used in the USA, China and
Argentina and particularly fewer firms in Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and UK had a high level
of action programs although all of these expected varying degrees of greater commitment in relation to the
future implementation of quality programs. The importance of the quality of the products/services offered in
the selection of the suppliers displays little variability with almost all firms (92%) giving this high
importance. In terms of ISO9000 certification, countries display a varied level of compliance. While overall
almost three quarters of respondents were certified some countries exhibited a particularly low rate of
certification, namely Norway, Spain, Croatia and Belgium. These may reflect country specific characteristics,
for example in Norway 39% of firms employ less that 10 workers and 88% less than 100 workers which is
different to the overall pattern of the respondents where only 21% employ 100 workers or less. ISO9000
adoption is related to firm size with only 44% of those employing 100 workers or less certified compared to
73% overall.

3.2 Quality priorities

Overall quality rates very high in the list of priorities with 83% and 80% of firms giving very high importance
to product design and quality and to conformance quality respectively. In most countries both rated similarly
but both were particularly high among firms in China (71%, 70%). In other countries conformance quality
was less important than product design and quality: Argentina (42%, 25%), Germany (53%, 21%) and
Netherlands (44%, 30%). In the UK both were rated particularly low (29%, 38%). Whether having a higher or
lower importance is a reflection of the levels of quality achievement or whether its greater importance is a
reflection of greater need may be a mute point in the face of continuous improvement but its comparison to
other priorities may be useful for further analysis. When the importance of quality priorities are compared to
the changes in customer needs over the previous three years it can be seen that there are also some different
patterns. For example quality order winners rate very high among USA firms (93%, 86%) and this has
changed little over the previous three years perhaps indicating that the quality needs are being met. Despite
this quality improvement continues to be an important goal for USA firms (71%, 93%). Whereas in other
countries, China, Hungary and Ireland the importance is similarly high while the quality priorities increased
over the previous three years. In China and Hungary quality remains and important improvement goal but
fewer Irish based firms rate it as very important (84%, 81%). Among firms in both Argentina (36%, 57%) and
the Netherlands (38%, 57%) fewer rate quality improvement goals as important.



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