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The purpose of this paper is to attempt to: explore the problems that the production division of Qatar Steel Company (QASCO) typically encounter in implementing QCs, identify the critical success factors promoting QCs implementation and discern the real benefits of QCs implementation.

Data for this study were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire that was distributed to 400 QCs members within the five departments (i.e. Manufacturing, Maintenance, Direct Reduction, Material Control and Technical departments) which comprised the production division of QASCO. Of the 400 questionnaires posted, a total of 197 were returned and used for the analysis.

The results of the study indicated that lack of support from top management was reported as the biggest problem impeding the implementation, and also commitment and support from top management were reported as the most important success factor of QCs implementation in the five departments. More importantly, the findings indicated that QCs implementation has created an atmosphere of cooperation within QASCO and produced many positive results including improving quality, increasing productivity, and improving the management style.

The sample is restricted to only a single division, i.e. the production division of QASCO, so it would be strongly recommended that data be gathered from various divisions of QASCO, i.e. replications of this study are required to generalize its findings. Studying the deriving and inhibiting forces to QCs implementation in practice remains a task that requires further attention from researchers, whatever their motivations.

The findings are important and relevant to all the departments in QASCO. The study hopes to create more awareness among management and employees of the strategic importance of QCs to operational processes. More importantly, the benefits attained would be a motivating factor for managers to use QCs.

The research provides empirical insights to the growing body of knowledge on QCs implementation. Most of QCs research has been done in developed countries. The study presents the successful adoption and implementation of QCs in a manufacturing firm in a developing country of the Middle East where published research results on the successful use of QCs have been rather scarce.

The purposes of this paper are to illustrate how the world class manufacturing (WCM) techniques which could be described as outperforming the industry's global best practices have been implemented in the Egyptian manufacturing firms, to identify the critical driving and resisting forces toward WCM techniques implementation in Egyptian manufacturing firms, and to provide guidelines for the successful implementation of WCM by Egyptian manufacturers.

The data analyzed in this study are collected from a mail questionnaire sent to 200 manufacturing firms in Egypt.

The findings of this study indicate that the Egyptian manufacturers are still in the 1970s and 1980s, when compared with world‐class manufacturers. The most important variables that promote the implementation of WCM techniques are “reduced operating costs (marketing and production)” and “global issues (environment‐market).” More importantly, the results of this study indicate that poor planning and lack of knowledge are the most significant barriers to WCM implementation in the Egyptian manufacturing sector.

There is a need to empirically explore the benefits of WCM implementation by the Egyptian manufacturing companies. Furthermore, more research is needed to study how the perceived importance of these drivers and barriers may differ across each industry such as manufacturing equipment, chemical and plastics, telecommunications, hardware equipment, textile industry, home equipment, scientific and medical equipment, management consulting, and software development.

This study hopes to create more awareness among management and employees about the strategic importance of WCM techniques to operations processes in the Egyptian manufacturing firms.

Although the last few years have witnessed phenomenal growth in WCM techniques, the underlying factors driving and inhibiting its diffusion are not well understood specially in the context of less developed countries in general and Egypt in particular. Therefore, this paper presents an empirical research that investigated the factors driving and inhibiting WCM implementation in Egypt and it provides insight into the strategies currently being adopted by Egyptian manufacturers in an effort to meet the challenge of obtaining WCM status.

The purpose of this study was to examine the quality performance of the Egyptian manufacturing industry based on Flynn's quality management practices framework.

A literature-based questionnaire was developed to collect the research data. The sample studied included 193 professionals from different manufacturing firms in Egypt. The research model utilized seven first-order constructs to measure infrastructure and core quality practices and the model was analyzed by structural equation modeling.

The results of the study showed that infrastructure practices had a positive effect on core quality practices, which in turn, significantly influenced quality performance. The findings confirmed that Egyptian manufacturing firms have a good foundation of quality management practices enabling them to improve quality performance.

This study provides a foundation for Egyptian manufacturing firms to develop a practical plan for implementing total quality management (TQM). In addition, the results of this study will help managers and policy makers develop a thorough understanding of the current status of TQM initiatives, enablers and barriers in Egypt.

The study represents one of the few attempts to examine quality practices and quality performance in the manufacturing sector in Egypt. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to examine these parameters in this context in Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a comprehensive set of potential determinants influencing the successful implementation of world class manufacturing (WCM) in a less‐developed country environment on the basis of a research conducted among manufacturing firms in Egypt.

Data for this paper are collected using a self‐administrated questionnaire that is distributed to 200 Egyptian manufacturing firms. Of the 200 questionnaires posted, a total of 96 questionnaires are returned and used for the analysis. The respondents express their opinions concerning the importance of subsequent factors for implementation success and about the factors' presence in their manufacturing firms. Moreover, the impact of the factors on the implementation success is examined.

The challenge for the Egyptian manufacturers today is to advance their manufacturing activities. To address this challenge the Egyptian manufacturing firms need to understand what are the factors that play critical role in utilising the WCM techniques and their implications on business strategic objective to compete successfully in the global arena. This paper discusses the above issues and proposes seven critical factors classified into two categories and validated empirically through a sample of 96 companies being surveyed in Egypt. The results clearly demonstrate that WCM strategic and tactical success factors have catalytic influence on WCM success.

There is a need to empirically test and refine the proposed factors, and to explore relationships among the various variables by collecting data from organisations that have already implemented WCM.

The research outcomes are useful for professionals who lead WCM implementation and those who make decisions for the first time on WCM implementation. The results can be used by practitioners while managing the project and handling people's attitudes.

This paper proves the influence of particular factors on the success of WCM implementation in certain circumstances, thus giving insight into the genuine mechanisms determining WCM implementation outcome.

The pharmaceutical industry has a critical impact on health promotion. It is essential to identify and prioritize the critical success factors (CSFs) within this industry to ensure successful implementation of total quality management (TQM). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritize CSFs that affect TQM successful implementation in the pharmaceutical industry.

Based on a thorough review of the literature and building on the earlier studies, a valid questionnaire was developed and sent to 320 managers in pharmaceutical sector. In total, 210 completed questionnaires were returned. The technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was used to rank and prioritize CSFs.

Results of the data analyses showed that information and analysis, management commitment, relationship with suppliers, and customer focus are the top four CSFs for the successful implementation of TQM in the pharmaceutical sector.

Using TOPSIS approach, this is the first study that determines CSFs that have impact on successful implementation of TQM in the pharmaceutical sector. There have been limited studies investigating the CSFs in developing countries. The findings will be useful in helping manager to successfully implement TQM in emerging markets. The approach will help future studies to examine the impact of successful implementation of TQM on firm performance in other industries and in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the contextual quality management practices (QMP) and to empirically examine their underlying dimensions and its direct influence or association with performance in context to Indian IT enabled service small- and mid-size enterprises (SMEs).

The methodology adopted in this study is sequential exploratory mixed method approach. This study adopts two stage processes of capturing data, first identifying critical QMP/indicators as obtained from review of literature, followed by in-depth interview based on semi-structured questionnaire from sample of 20 select service SMEs. Based on comprehensive compilation of literature as well as through in-depth interview 21 QMP have been identified. Structured instrument has been developed taking measures as identified. The QMP relevant to SMEs have been derived from Kaynak (2003), Samat et al. (2006), Salaheldin (2009), Kim et al. (2012) and Talib et al. (2013b). The research instrument developed was customised and adapted to the background of Indian IT enabled service SMEs. Similarly for measuring quality performance five items have been identified from previous literature. Five-point Likert scale ranging from “5=strongly agree” to “1=strongly disagree” is used to show the agreement of the respondents. Exploratory factor analysis has been deployed to identify underlying dimensions of QMP. Thereafter, linear regression modelling has been done to better understand the relationships between QMP and quality performance.

A three-factor solution has been obtained and the individual practices could be reconfigured into three dimensions, namely, organisational management, capacity management and quality documentation and security management (QDSM). The findings reflect that strength of Indian IT enabled service SMEs pertaining to quality implementation lie with customer focus, training and service-level management (SLM). Regression analysis shows that all three factor dimensions are positively influencing quality performance. The predictor score of three factor dimensions clearly reflects that Indian SMEs in service sectors have been focusing more on organisational culture and QDSM. The overall findings resemble very interesting insights which gives indication of unstructured pattern of approach. Keeping in view the pattern of practices it can be predicted that Indian digital SMEs are not practicing continuous improvement. It could be inferred that Indian IT enabled service SMEs approach is non-continuous in nature.

Further analysis may be needed to measure the construct using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The research paper is limited by including only six service sub-sectors which may not be adequate to generalise the results for the entire IT enabled/digital service SMEs within India. The same study can be extended by incorporating more quality management (QM) variables and other contextual factors within the organisation and by involving other service sector SMEs. Future research could be done by incorporating multi-contingency framework and moreover researchers may deploy other sophisticated tools and techniques to investigate how individual QMP are interrelated and its influence on performance by means of linkage research. The conceptual model developed can be validated by incorporating other service sector SMEs by deploying CFA and structural modelling.

This study could be beneficial to entrepreneurs and managers of start-ups and other service industries towards understanding improvement and changing their implementation approach. The theoretically grounded conceptual framework developed could provide entrepreneurial insights to new service managers and entrepreneurs who can better allocate their scarce resources to build quality and scalability effectively.

This study adds to the literature in identifying and showing importance of QMP in Indian IT enabled service SMEs. This choice is appropriate for this study as no prior research has been found to be conducted on this particular sector from Indian context, especially from service SMEs point of view. This research contributes in identifying new QMP (i.e. service reporting; content management; SLM and information and security management). Overall, the results of this study contribute towards advancing the understanding of the dimensionality of QM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first study being undertaken in context to Indian IT enabled service SMEs and is believed that the study provides valuable knowledge from the perspective of QM issues pertaining to Indian service firms.

States that a review of the literature on materials requirements planning (MRP) implementation in less developed countries in general, and in Egypt in particular, revealed that no systematic study has attempted to investigate how manufacturing companies have been implementing MRP systems. Thus attempts to investigate the state of the art of MRP implementation in Egypt. States the major mail survey findings of the 93 responses received, of which 52 were MRP companies which operated in quite different business environments within the Egyptian industrial sector. The findings of the current study may permit MRP managers and users to obtain a better understanding of MRP promoters, suggest some ideas for further research and acquaint the reader elsewhere in the world how manufacturing companies in less developed countries such as Egypt are implementing new production management systems like MRP systems. The findings of the study suggest that MRP implementation in Egypt is relatively similar to implementation in manufacturing companies in the newly industrialised countries in the west.

The purpose of this paper is to identify critical aspects of quality management (QM) adoption in a small company. QM is more widely applied in large companies than in small ones. Previous research has pointed to QM ideas as sound and valid for small companies, but that many such initiatives fail because of poor implementation. With scarcity of resources and expertise, it is critical to study how QM can be initiated in small companies with often sceptical owner-managers.

This paper is based on a single case study of a small company; data has been collected through two sets of interviews: one in late 2009 and one in mid-2012, as well as project reports and public financial data. This allows for a study of the adoption process over time.

This study points to four critical areas when initiating QM work in a small company: the importance of initiation, the importance of contextualisation, QM adoption as an iterative process, and the need for external support.

This paper highlights the importance of overcoming small business owners’ reluctance towards QM. Most research on QM initiatives in small companies has focused on the stages that follow an actual decision to begin a QM initiative. This paper shows that it is critical to carefully consider the stages leading to the decision. Further, it contributes with a case study on a small company, otherwise uncommon in QM research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how quality control circles (QCCs) enhance work safety in a manufacturing firm in a developing country environment of the Middle East.

This paper is an exploratory investigation into the role of QCCs in enhancing work safety based on a case study method. This includes: a comprehensive scrutiny of the relevant literature; and an analysis of a case study of QCCs implementation for enhancing work safety in Direct Reduction Furnace Zone at Qasco, a steel mill in the State of Qatar.

At the outset, the QCC team identified three specific targets for them to achieve in order to ensure a safe work environment for its workers. After having identified the causes of the problems, the team members were able to analyze the problems, generate alternative solutions, and eventually implement the best solutions. Consequently, the members were able to achieve all their targets.

There is a need to empirically test and refine the critical factors affecting the successful implementation of QCCs and to explore the most important barriers that might impede the success of their implementation.

The findings of this study can be considered as a roadmap for successful implementation of QCCs in all the subsidiaries of Industries Qatar, the parent company of Qasco, and perhaps in all other organizations in the different sectors and industries but with a similar working environment to that of Qasco.

Generally, the results of this research should enhance the current practices of QCCs implementation, which mostly follow narrowly‐focused approaches. In essence, the results of this research will help management in making crucial decisions and in resource allocations that are required to make the QCCs implementation a success.

Total quality management (TQM) has begun to influence national business systems and is widely seen as a “revolution” in management. TQM initiatives continuously search the needs of the customers and incorporate them in the organization on an ongoing basis. For this reason, the majority of research study has been undertaken in this field and is still going on across the world, especially in the developing countries, which are lagging behind in the implementation of TQM. Considering the above reasons, the purpose of this paper is to assess the awareness of TQM program in the Indian service industries.

By means of a literature review and empirical data collected using a self‐administered instrument distributed to select Indian service companies, the awareness of TQM was investigated. A total of 172 useable survey instruments were included for the final analysis. This study sample consisted of a group of selected Indian service companies from healthcare, information and communication technology (ICT), banking, and hospitality industries. The data were analyzed using graphical representation approach, descriptive statistical analysis, and correlation analysis.

The analysis revealed the significance and usage of TQM in Indian service industries. The results also suggested that the Indian service industries are well aware of the TQM program, though more efforts need to be focused on implementing it properly, use of TQM models and frameworks, and continuously improving the ongoing TQM practices.

Indian service managers show a stronger familiarity with TQM concepts and practices and they believe that TQM is a way of guaranteeing high quality products and services. Therefore, service companies should invest in TQM, as this could help them to improve competitiveness in the marketplace. Further, the Indian service managers and practitioners must be more concerned about the maintenance of standards and take a more dynamic approach towards TQM, thus preparing their company more effective for future challenges.

The result provided in this paper will help in understanding the TQM awareness in the Indian service sector as a whole and suggest some additional improvements in the knowledge of TQM to the managers of Indian service industries which could enhance the level of TQM implementation and hence, business performance.

The assessment of TQM awareness in Indian service industries, along with the understanding of the concept of TQM, has been expanded in the literature on TQM in the Indian service industry.