Author(s)

Salah Alolayan, Saleem Hashmi, Bekir Yilbas, Hosny Hamdy

Department of Quantitative Methods & Information Sys- tems, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait..
Mechanical Engineering Depart- ment, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, KSA;.
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland;.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explore the quality management system (QMS) of the ISO 9001 certified work organizations in Kuwait and evaluate their expectation and satisfaction levels with respect to the auditing procedures performed by various well-known certification bodies. The research has addressed multiple quality principles through a well-designed, verified and validated questionnaire. The research was based on 98 valid responded questionnaires as format (A) and 69 items as format (B). Thus, two formats were distributed for each organization under the study. Formats (A) and (B) are tailored toward quality managers or quality management representatives and non-quality related employees respectively, in the same organization. The differences in attitudes and awareness level between these two categories are statistically measured. Furthermore, for the purpose of benchmarking, some of the research results are compared against previous research results conducted in Sweden.

Motives; Commitment; Auditing; Certification Bodies; ISO 9001:2008; QMS; Continual Improvement; Customer Satisfaction

S. Alolayan, S. Hashmi, B. Yilbas and H. Hamdy, "An Empirical Evaluation of the ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems for Certified Work Organizations in Kuwait as Benchmarked against Analogous Swedish Organizations," Journal of Service Science and Management, Vol. 6 No. 1, 2013, pp. 80-95. doi: 10.4236/jssm.2013.61009.