TITLE:
Assessing the Awareness and Usage of Quality Control Tools with Emphasis to Statistical Process Control (SPC) in Ethiopian Manufacturing Industries
AUTHORS:
Leakemariam Berhe, Tesfay Gidey
KEYWORDS:
Quality Products, Awareness, Usage, Statistical Process Control, Ethiopia
JOURNAL NAME:
Intelligent Information Management,
Vol.8 No.6,
November
9,
2016
ABSTRACT: Introduction: The present work was devoted
to assess the awareness and usage of quality control tools with the emphasis on
statistical process control in Ethiopian manufacturing industries. Semi
structured questionnaire has been employed to executive and technical managers
of manufacturing industries of various size and specialism across the country.
Stratified random sample method by region was used to select sample industries
for the study. The samples used for this study are industries mainly from Oromiya,
Addis Ababa, Tigray, Amara, SNNP and Diredawa regions proportional to their
size of the available industries. Methods: Exploratory method and descriptive
statistics was used for data analysis. Available documents and reports related
to quality control policy of the selected companies were investigated. Results
and Discussions: The number of manufacturing industries involved in this study
was 44. Of the sampled manufacturing industries about 60% are from Oromiya and
Addis Ababa regions. It has been reported that 100% of the respondents said
that the importance of quality control tools is very important to their
organizations’ productivity and quality improvement (Figure 3). Quality control
professionals were also asked the extent to which quality control system is
working in their industry and majority of the respondents (45%) have indicated
that quality control system is working to some extent in their respective
industries (Figure 18). Conclusions and Recommendations: Most of the quality
department of the industries did not fully recognize the importance of
statistical process control as quality control tools. This is mainly due to
lack of awareness and motivation of the top managements, shortage of man power
in the area, and others together would make it difficult to apply quality
control tools in their organization. In general, the industries in Ethiopia are
deficient in vigor and found to be stagnant hence less exposed to a highly
competitive market and don’t adopt the latest quality control techniques in
order to gain knowledge about systems to improve quality and operational
performance. We conclude that quality management system has to be established
as an independent entity with a real power and hence the quality control
department which is responsible for quality can make an irreversible decision
with respect to quality of any given product. Moreover, the concerned bodies
(government and ministry of industries) should give attention and work together
with universities to ensure how these statistical process control techniques
could be incorporated in a curriculum of the universities at higher levels in
degree and masters programs. Furthermore, different trainings which could
improve quality and efficiency of their respective management system should be
given as short and long term to the employees including top and middle managers
found in various industries relevant to their process.