| dc.description.abstract | Despite the vast research done on quality control systems in service firms in Kenya, little is known or perceived of quality control systems used by the Kenyan manufacturing sector. Kenya's manufacturing sector is made up of twelve different types ofindustries and is responsible for 16.3% of the nation's Nominal GDP.
This research aimed at analyzing the quality control systems used by manufacturing firms in Kenya in a bid to understand how manufacturing firms in Kenya are geared towards following international standards of quality control and to gain an in-depth understanding of the decisions made by operations managers in manufacturing firms in Kenya and their psyche towards implementation of cost-prohibitive quality control
mechanisms.
The study was carried out via interviewing a sample of organizations within different industries and analyzing their quality control systems to determine the extent to which global best practice systems are used. The results obtained, while proving that 100% of all manufacturing firms in Kenya have internal quality controls also proved that only 29% of these firms are actually using best practice quality control systems, whereas 33% have very rudimentary quality controls in place.
Another key finding was that of the respondents in the study, 63% were IS09001:2008 certified and 21% were ISO 22000: 2005 certified. The implications of this on the research objectives is that while specific Kenyan Manufacturing Firms are moving towards World Class Organization status in quality control systems, most are still lagging behind when it comes to adapting best practice quality control systems. This needs to change if Kenya is to create for itself a sustainable competitive advantage on the international scale using quality as a driver. | en_US |
