3.3 Quality performance
The competitive importance of quality issues in winning orders over competitors displays also some
variability. Product design and quality is perceived as being very important in Germany (97%), China (96%)
and Denmark (95%). Differently Croatia, UK and Norway rate this factor as far lower. Conformance quality
is also rated very high in both China (100%) and Australia (90%), while Netherlands Germany and Argentina
consider this issue as being significantly less important. As for quality issues such as poor quality of supplies
and internal quality and their impact on lateness, yet Norway and Germany tend to rate the former factor as
quite high, while other countries such as Belgium and Brazil attach much less importance to it. Similarly in
terms of internal quality as a cause for lateness, both Brazil (71%) and the USA (70%) rate this factor very
high, while both Norway (22%) and Italy (23%) rate it very low. The rankings in the amount of change in
quality performance criteria such as manufacturing conformance and product quality and reliability over the
past three years portray also a quite varied picture. In terms of manufacturing conformance, for example we
find Argentina (79%), Germany (77%), Hungary (77%) and Brazil (76%) on one side of the spectrum; while
on the opposite end Norway (37%), Croatia (41%) and Belgium (41%) report less amount of change in this
criterion. As for product quality and reliability, China (96%) and Brazil (91%) lead the chart, while Belgium
(47%) Norway (48%) and the UK (53%) rate this factor as significantly lower.
3.4 Firms’ position on the value chain,
By considering practices, priorities and performance according to the firms’ position on the value chain
(component manufacturers, product assemblers, distributors, end-users, mixed) several differences also
emerge (Table 2).
In terms of practices and more specifically in relation to maintenance costs, all the firms regardless of their
position on the value chain tend to deploy most of their resources in corrective maintenance (40:60). The only
exception is represented by component manufacturers and end-users firms that deploy equally their resources
among preventive and corrective maintenance (50:50). As for quality costs, all the firms tend to spend more
on inspection costs rather than internal, preventive or external costs. In terms of implanting ISO9000, all firms
exhibit similar figures although component manufacturers display a greater degree of adherence to the
scheme. The importance of the quality of the products/services offered in the selection of the suppliers
displays some variability with component manufacturers, distributors and assemblers giving this high
importance, while end-users and mixed firms seem to be less concerned about this issue. Finally, as for both
the current and the future implementation of quality programs, product assemblers and distributors find
themselves at the opposite side of the spectrum with product assemblers displaying the highest degree of
implementation and distributors the lowest.
As for priorities, overall quality rates not very high in the list of priorities with 51% of end users’ firms and
only 29% of mixed firms giving very high importance to product design and quality. In terms of quality
conformance, this factor seems to play a major role for assemblers (53%) but not for mixed firms (29%). By
looking at improvement goals, firms display also a different attitude towards quality: product assemblers give
high importance to both manufacturing conformance and product quality and reliability; whereas mixed firms
tend to give little importance to the former and end-users firms give more importance to the latter.
By considering quality performance, the competitive importance of quality issues in winning orders over
competitors displays also some variability. Product design and quality and quality conformance are perceived