Abstract:
A TQM based approach has been developed to improve the quality of products of MDF boards manufacturing industry .The methodology developed has been implemented in a selected local company and a considerable improvement in the quality of boards have been observed. As the MDF boards manufacturing process is almost the same everywhere, the methodology implemented for quality improvements can be used for the entire MDF industry. As an initial step, a customer survey was carried out on the external customers. This survey covered the customer perception about quality of purchased boards and the product variety needed by the customers. For this survey, it used five MDF board manufactures both locally and in abroad. A questioner survey method was used for this purpose. Outcomes of this are poor quality boards, poor response for the customer complains and unavailability of customer preferred boards. Depending on the external survey outcomes, another survey was carried out on internal customers to reveal the exact reasons for poor quality. Main outcomes of this are, poor quality control method implemented, poor customer orientation, inadequate quality parameters and lack of quality related parameters exist within the industry. As a solution for these problems, a new TQM based quality control methodology has been developed and implemented for the entire production process. Further a quality council system and work team involvement method has been introduced to address the issues from both internal and external customers. Then process improvement technique was implemented in order to further improve quality and minimize waste. Here the Kaizen theory has been used as the main tool for process improvement. A performance measure was introduced to measure the success of the newly implemented system.
