Large size manufacturing organizations use established
quality management tools, which are administered
electronically either through a single dedicated QM system,
integrated within a corporate enterprise resource planning
(ERP) system, or as standalone software solutions from several
different suppliers. Such traditional quality management tools are
demanding to operate and have an inherent communication lag,
resulting in time delays from the discovery of a quality issue until
implementation of the corrective or preventive measure. Further,
they do not provide sufficient and timely knowledge management
and knowledge creation opportunities to prevent a quality
problem from infecting other areas of the supply chain, and they
do not keep pace with a rapidly changing business environment.
High scrap and rework costs, operational inefficiencies, defectiveproducts that reach the marketplace, product recalls, declining
customer satisfaction, deteriorating market share, high product
liability, and legal costs are common events arising from
insufficient quality (Chao, Iravani, & Savaskan, 2009).