ebook img

Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management PDF

291 Pages·2017·3.57 MB·English
by  
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management

Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management : A Goal Programming Approach Author Alidrisi, Hisham Mostafa Published 2010 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Engineering DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/3629 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/368103 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management: A Goal Programming Approach Hisham Mostafa Alidrisi BSc (Industrial Engineering), MEng (Engineering Management) Griffith School of Engineering Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2010 Declaration This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself Hisham Mostafa Alidrisi April 2010 ii Acknowledgements First, and foremost, praise is due to almighty ALLAH, Who bestowed me to complete this work. Many thanks are also due to my principal supervisor, Professor Sherif Mohamed, for providing me with the opportunity to complete this PhD study under his supervision. I am greatly indebted to Professor Mohamed for providing the academic and technical assistance. I also appreciate his unlimited support towards improving my research skills. Many thanks for his patience, efforts, and valuable guidance. Special thanks to my wife, Mona, for her patience, care, support, and continuous encouragement, which enabled me to complete this thesis. Her sacrifices have not gone unnoticed. Many thanks are also due to my little son, Abdullah, for being a source of joy, laughter and encouragement throughout. I extend special thanks to my mother, Salma, and my father, Mustafa, for their continuous support and prayers. I owe my gratitude to my brother, sisters, relatives and friends who have always encouraged me during the study period. Many thanks are also due to all individuals (and their respective organizations) who willingly participated in the questionnaire and the semi- structured interviews. Last, but not least, I am indebted to all my RHD colleagues, whether from the School of Engineering or from other schools, for their lively discussions and conversations. Thanks to Griffith University for providing such a stimulating and knowledge-sharing environment. iii Abstract The main aim of this thesis is to assist organizations in understanding the nature of quality management from a resource-based perspective by investigating the relationship between strategies needed to drive quality enhancement, and resources being allocated to support effective strategy implementation. To achieve this research aim, the thesis employs both quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques to give insight into how quality management strategies and resources interact. The thesis argues that organizations may veer away from their quality management implementation plans because of an inherent mismatch between the needed and allocated resources to support strategy implementation. Therefore, a secondary aim of this thesis is to develop a methodology whereby an organization can: 1) determine how their resources are being allocated to support different quality enhancement strategies, and 2) identify any resource discrepancy between what is needed by a certain strategy, and what is being allocated to it. For any organization, whether small or large, manufacturing or service, Total Quality Management (TQM) is a recognized source of competitive advantage to sustain the organization’s position against its competitors. Benefits of applying TQM have been reported by various industries; in particular, the food-processing industry where quality is a major strategic issue. Food-processing organizations recognize that higher quality leads to better product reputation, increased market share and higher profits. They also operate under strict regulatory requirements, and therefore, adopt formal and disciplined approaches to quality management. Consequently, and keeping the above research aims in mind, this thesis adopts an organizational case study approach to explore quality management resource- strategy interactions, and related resource distribution challenges confronting Quality Departments in two of the largest food-processing organizations in Saudi Arabia. Two broad sets of elements are fundamental to the success of TQM: soft elements (e.g. management commitment, employment empowerment, etc.) and hard elements (e.g. control processes, technology utilization, etc.). Although the literature does not clearly demonstrate which set of elements is more significantly related to business and organizational performance, all TQM elements can be viewed as human, organizational, and technological resources. It is this resource-based view of TQM elements that led this thesis to deal with quality management from a strategic viewpoint, or what is known as Strategic Quality Management (SQM). Critical review of the SQM literature identified eight strategies as drivers of quality enhancement. These strategies include the continuous: 1) use of human knowledge, 2) control of quality costs, 3) check of failures, 4) transfer of customer feedback, 5) approach towards targets, 6) management of quality information, 7) management of the quality system itself, and 8) the periodical quality appraisal (i.e. auditing). The review also highlighted a lack of theoretical framework or empirical model to examine the various levels of contribution of each strategy towards quality iv enhancement, or to guide the process of resource allocation among those eight strategies. To bridge these identified research gaps, the thesis adopts a two-phase research methodology. In the first phase, the thesis handles the issue of resource allocation from the perspective of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as two MCDM techniques, namely Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Goal Programming (GP), are employed. In the first step of the first phase, a conceptual framework comprising three clusters (resources, strategies, and ability to enhance quality) has been developed in the form of a multi-criteria decision problem where the ANP was employed to model resource-dependence and resource-strategy interactions. This phase required the development and distribution of a questionnaire targeting managers who worked in the Quality Departments for the two selected organizations. The managers were asked to compare a pair of elements (e.g. resources or strategies) at a time with respect to a control criterion (e.g. supporting a certain strategy or enhancing overall quality). Evaluating the dependence and feedback, among and within the framework clusters, provided a systematic and objective way of deriving the weights to be used for prioritizing strategies (in terms of their individual contribution towards quality enhancement), and determining the relative levels of resource influence on each other, and on strategy implementation. Moreover, this phase identified resource- allocation discrepancies between what each strategy needs and what it actually receives from available resources. The second step of the first phase of the research utilized the output of the ANP analysis as input for a Goal Programming (GP) model to identify to what extent each strategy is under- or over-resourced. The model results indicated that both organizations, despite having different strategy priorities, need to re-allocate their resources to better support their quality enhancement strategies. The model results revealed interesting observations. For instance, one company ranked the strategy of controlling quality costs as having the least ability to enhance overall quality; however, this particular strategy was then found to be over-resourced by as much as 70%. Similarly, in the second company, the strategy of check of failures is the most over-resourced (16.8%), even though it is priority 6 in terms of resources that should be allocated for the eight strategies. In the second phase of the research, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 managers working for the two organizations. For each organization, the interviews ascertained how individual quality, supply chain or information technology managers manage, evaluate, and report the progress of strategy implementation. The interviews’ findings not only shed some light on quality management practices, and resource availability and allocation, but were also used to see if the quantitative output resulting from the developed hybrid ANP- GP methodology would be corroborated. There are two main contributions made by this thesis: 1) contribution to the existing body of knowledge on quality management through the development of a v conceptual framework that explicitly captures the interactions among, and within, quality management resources and strategies, and 2) contribution to current industry practice through the provision of a methodology whereby organizations would identify resource-strategy allocation discrepancies, and hence be able to convey a message to senior management of what resource is needed, and to which strategy the identified resource should be allocated, thus improving the overall level of resource utilization. The proposed methodology relies heavily on the expertise, knowledge and experience of managers. As such, it involves subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors at a particular organization, as well as pertinent industry or country level variables. Consequently, the findings reported herein can only be analytically generalized in the context of large organizations operating in the Saudi food-processing industry. Nevertheless, the proposed methodology is generic in nature and could be replicated to provide a deliberate and structured approach to resource utilization in the context of implementing quality enhancement strategies. vi List of Peer-Reviewed Publications The following papers were produced to disseminate some results from the work undertaken by the author during the course of this PhD research. Journal Paper 1. Alidrisi, H. and Mohamed, S (--). “Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management: A Goal Programming Approach.” International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management (under review). Conference Paper 1. Alidrisi, H. and Mohamed, S. (2009). “Resource Allocation for Strategic Quality Management: An Analytic Network Process (ANP) Model.” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Construction in the 21st Century (CITC-V), May 20-22, 2009, Istanbul, Turkey, 789-795. vii Table of Contents Declaration ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv List of Peer-Reviewed Publications vii Table of Contents viii List of Figures xiv List of Tables xvi Acronym xviii Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background 1 1.2 Research Rationale 7 1.3 Research Objectives 16 1.4 Research Design and Methodology 19 1.5 Thesis Organization 20 Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.1 Introduction 23 2.2 Categorization of Resources 23 2.3 The Role of Resources in Strategic Management 27 2.3.1 Definitions of Strategy and Resources 27 2.3.2 Resources as an Internal Power of Organization 30 2.3.3 Resources as a Creator of Competitive Advantage 33 2.2.4 The Strategic Role of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) 35 2.4 The Role of Resources in Quality Management 37 2.4.1 Technological Resources and Quality Management 37 2.4.2 Organizational Resources and Quality Management 40 viii 2.4.3 Human Resources and Quality Management 43 2.4.4 TQM Elements as Resources 46 2.5 Strategic Quality Management (SQM) 46 2.5.1 Quality as a Competitive Advantage 47 2.5.2 Linking Quality to Strategy 49 2.5.3 Definition of SQM 51 2.6 Goal Programming and Analytic Network Process in Resources and Quality Issues 55 2.6.1 GP and ANP/AHP in Resource Allocation 55 2.6.2 GP and ANP/AHP in Improving Quality 57 2.7 Summary 58 Chapter 3: Research Methodology 3.1 Introduction 60 3.2 The Quantitative Phase 60 3.2.1 First Step: The Analytic Network Process (ANP) 63 3.2.1.1 What is ANP? 63 3.2.1.2 Why ANP? 71 3.2.1.3 ANP Analysis 72 3.2.2 The Second Step: The Goal Programming (GP) 75 3.2.2.1 What is Goal Programming (GP)? 75 3.2.2.2 Why GP? 78 3.2.2.3 The GP Model 81 3.3 The Qualitative Phase 83 3.3.1 Semi-Structured Interviews 83 3.3.2 Why Semi-structured Interview? 84 3.3.3 Conducting the Semi-structured Interviews 85 3.4 Summary 86 ix

Description:
allocated resources to support strategy implementation. Therefore . quality management resources and strategies, and 2) contribution to current.
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.