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5.3.1 Contractors Perception of TQM
On the contractors’ perception of quality, it can be seen from the results that each of the contractors surveyed in this study agreed that quality was a competitive advantage
for their respective organizations. The majority of respondents 82 believed that quality was a competitive advantage for their organization because competitive advantage is the
representation of a company’s good quality, strength and resistance. Having a competitive advantage can make the company a pioneer and leader in the industry.
Almost all of the contractors believed that the quality of productservice was very important. For one contractor Waskita Karya, the quality of productservice was only
rated as important. Most of the respondents 67 said that the quality of productsservice was very important because they realized that the satisfaction of their customers depend on
the quality of the products and services they deliver. If respondents can provide high quality services for its customers, they will trust the company and use its service again in
the future. All of the contractors rated customer satisfaction as very important for their
organization. Continuous improvement of service for the customers was always a priority. With high quality services, the contractors hope that their customer satisfaction will
ultimately increase also, bringing more potential revenue stream and higher profits for them in the future. Thus the contractors always tried to deliver the best projects with the
highest quality possible. For the process with the potential for improvement in their operation, the
respondents considered the testing procedures at job sites as the process with the highest potential for improvement, while the process with the lowest potential was administration
of change orders. This was because testing procedure at job sites required technical expertise that is always developing, while the administration procedure was already in a
relatively good condition. Interestingly, however, when the respondents were asked to rank in the order of
importance some of the important attributes in their operation, i.e. quality, safety within their construction sites, time, cost and scope, they ranked scope and quality as the most
important considerations, followed by cost, safety within their construction sites and time schedule. To have a complete scope of project was very important because the clients
always demanded their project to have all the facilities as specified in the design.
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Four of the contractors Waskita Karya, Pembangunan Perumahan, Hutama Karya and Adhi Karya used the leading company in their field as their quality level benchmark
for their company. According to most of the respondents 64, the contractors used the leading company in the field as their benchmark because the contractors saw that the
leading company had become successful in their business due to the fact that it had high quality standard. Thus the majority of contractors wanted to emulate this success by setting
their quality goals accordingly.
5.3.2 The Contractors Data Acquisition Method