41
4.6 Contractor’s Perception of Quality
In this section, six questions were asked to evaluate the contractors’s perceptions of
quality. Results are as follows.
4.6.1 Organization’s Perception of Quality
Respondents were asked to choose one answer about their respective organization’s perception of quality. The general results representing the respective
companies are shown in the table below.
Table 4.6 Organization’s perception of quality for the respective contractors
Companies Organization’s perception of quality
Waskita Karya A competitive advantage
Pembangunan Perumahan A competitive advantage. The more competitive, the better Wijaya Kusuma
A competitive advantage Wijaya Karya
A competitive advantage
Hutama Karya A competitive advantage. With this advantage in quality the
company can get better profit for giving customers the best service and product.
Adhi Karya A competitive advantage
The results in general show that all contractors view a competitive advantage over the competitors as their respective organization’s perception of quality because of the role
of competitive advantage in representing good quality, strenght, resistance and safety. The Total Quality Management TQM philosophy of doing business emphasizes lowering
costs by reducing waste, helping suppliers provide quality products and satisfying the customer with quality goods and services. Contractors that can produce goods at lower
costs than their competitors, while delivering quality products that satisfy their customers, will have an advantage over those companies that do not duplicate those feats.
Implementing TQM can help a company gain a competitive advantage in their business. Implementing TQM can help a company gain a competitive advantage in their business.
Competitive advantages can make the company that have them a pioneer and leader in the industry. These in turn will enable the company to an increase in productivity which
eventually lead to increasing profits.
42
The following figure highlights the level of response from individual respondents taken part in this research, irrespective of their companies, in relation with the
organization’s perception of quality.
Figure 4.5 Organization’s perception of quality in the construction industry in Semarang.
The figure above shows that the big majority of respondents taking part in this research 82 viewed a competitive advantage as their organization’s perception of
quality, while elimination of defects and others had the lowest rate of perception with only 3.6 respondents viewed them as the criterion for quality respectively.
4.6.2 The Rate of Importance for Product and Service Quality