Quality management practices based on seven core elements in Hong Kong manufacturing industries

In Hong Kong, as in many countries, the ISO 9000 standards have been used extensively in setting up quality assurance management systems. The ISO 9000 assures that a company is running well as to its status quo but it lacks a focus on further improvement. Therefore, more manufacturers are continuing the pursuit of total or strategic quality management after being certified to ISO 9000 for continuous improvement of their ISO 9000 based quality systems. Tummala et al. (Int. J. Effective Org. (1995) 48), identified seven core elements of TQM (or SQM) and the corresponding principal issues that need to be focused by organizations in formulating and implementing the TQM based strategies. In order to investigate the current quality management practices towards TQM implementation in Hong Kong manufacturing industries, a survey with questions associated with the seven core elements of SQM was conducted in 1999. The paper describes the key findings of the survey. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.