Linking Quality Management Practices with Performance of Manufacturing Industries in Tanzania

Abstract

Local products of manufacturing industries in Tanzania are subjected to intense competition in the markets. Product quality is one of key factors that play a considerable role for manufacturing industries to win the competitive advantage. This paper attempts to analyse the extents of quality management practices (QMP) and manufacturing performance (MP) as well as to examine the linkage between practices and performance. Data was collected from seventy-eight (78) manufacturing industries in Dar es Salaam region using questionnaires comprising of both single-item and multi-item questions. Descriptive statistics was used to quantify the extent of quality management practices and manufacturing performance (MP) of the industries. Factor analysis was used to reduce the scale items of QMP and MP into few underlying factors representing the items without loss of information. As a consequence, four QMP and two MP factors were identified. A correlation analysis was used to evaluate the effect of QMP on the performance of manufacturing industries. The findings show that most of manufacturing industries in Tanzania are large in scale and owned by private companies. Among these industries, many of them are dealing with food, beverage and tobacco products. The extent of quality management practices and manufacturing performance are favourable. Further to that, quality management practices mainly quality commitment significantly correlates with both operational and financial performance. This can be seen as a positive indication of the top management commitment in quality issues throughout the supply chain in supporting customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, flexibility in production quantity and overall product quality. Thus, local manufacturing industries should utilise the quality management and performance strengths to produce high-quality products that will penetrate into the markets. In addition, enforcement on the implementation of quality management tools and methods is required for the purpose of realising reasonable operational and financial performance while winning the competitive advantage.