الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 196 |  |  |
| | | from | 196 | | |
Abstract
Continuous improvement is considered the core of the total quality management (TQM) philosophy. TQM can be defined as a set of guiding principles that represent the foundations of a continuously improving organization. The TQM concepts have been materialized as a number of continuous improvement tools and methodologies that were pioneered by Deming and Juran.
This thesis proposes a methodology to establish the TQM culture in a leading Egyptian consumer electrical and home appliances manufacturing firm, which is focus on the continuous improvement approaches. An assessment of the production system under study has been made in order to identify the opportunities for performance improvement and determine pathways to achieve the change in people’s behavior and way of thinking in the context of their jobs. A steering committee selected one of the company’s main products to be the center of the efforts for this work. Several training programs were developed at the operational and tactical management levels in the firm for this purpose. Measurement system analyses have been conducted to enhance the capability and accuracy of the collected data.
The quality function deployment (QFD) has been used to effectively translate and organize customer requirements and expectations into the production process. The Deming cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) has been used as the framework to guide the improvement process and employ the other continuous improvement tools to deepen worker’s understanding and participation. Key performance indicators were selected to cover the four perspectives of balanced score card (BSC) (financial, customer, internal, learning and growth).
With the context of this research and for a realistic QFD study, many objectives were launched and thousands of measurements through a considerable amount of work have been performed, results were then analyzed to monitor and to control continuous improvement efforts throughout this work.
The study results confirmed the belief that continuous improvement, although one among other TQM basis, can be considered as the driving force to establish the TQM culture and to achieve better performance, attitudes, and participation in addition to considerable savings in costs and enhanced quality and productivity. It was observed that worker participation increased by about 220 %, a reduction of the cost of poor quality by 54.5%, a reduction of the amount of rework from 4.70% to 3.27%, increase in productivity by 49.3%, a reduction of about 2% of sales price due to new parts design and a reduction of 28%in market claims were realized. Outcomes evaluation indicates that significantly continuous improvement could be the driving force to establish the TQM culture and to achieve better performance.