Total Quality Integration In Supply Chain Operations And Performance Of Large Manufacturing Firms In Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

This study explores the impacts of Total Quality integration in Supply Chain Operations and performance within the context of large manufacturing firm in Nairobi Kenya. Most of the organizations has achieved world-class status when they successfully and explicitly developed operational capabilities (through Total Quality Management) to drive the company towards attainment of a sustained overall quality over their competitors which has a direct impact on customer satisfaction. However, Total Quality Integration (TQI) would only be successfully implemented in an organization if it’s well managed across all parties involved is supply chain network from upstream to downstream. Customers as the end user of the services and products need to be satisfied by what the corporations are offering, and this can be attained by continuous improvement and innovation through TQ and supply chain integration. Empirically, the purpose of this research is to present an explicit result on the effect of Total Quality integration on SCO and performance where other researchers have perhaps known or described them only implicitly. This study suggests that the role of TQ and SCO Integration has significant association with organization performance and customer satisfaction and support this proposition with statistical evidence. The result of the study fills a gap that exists in the literature on the impact Total Quality integration in Supply Chain Operations and performance of large manufacturing firms in Nairobi. The study adopted the descriptive cross-sectional design where data were collected using self-administered questionnaire that were distributed to 46 manufacturing firms targeting supply chain managers or their equivalent as the respondents where 38 copies were returned dully filled. The data was then presented in using pie charts, tables and analyzed using means and standard deviations and a regression equation adopted to establish the relationship. The finding gave a positive relationship between TQ integration in supply chain operation and the performance of large manufacturing firms in Nairobi. It was found that if TQ integration in supply chain operations if well implemented properly produces many benefits such as meeting the customers’ needs, better problem-solving capacity of the firm and better internal communication. The study therefore recommends that firms should adopt TQ integration I s their supply chain so as to attain optimum performance. The study’s key limitation is that it only focused on the manufacturing sector and thus the study’s findings might not be replicated to other context and thus future research should focus on expanding the domain through other dimensions such as logistics integration, geographical proximity and cross functional coordination for better output.