Contractors Perception of TQM

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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. 89 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