Conclusions
This research adds to the body of knowledge by studying the
impact of integrating knowledge management and quality
management and by demonstrating the effectiveness of a KM/
QM strategy through quantitative, empirical research. The
results demonstrate that manufacturing companies which
implement a KM/QM strategy can have significantly higher
product quality than similar companies without a KM/QM
strategy. The research also demonstrates that a KM/QM strategy
contributes significantly and positively to product quality
over KM/QM strategy application time, indicating quality
improvements over time. A comparison with control groups
from three similar sites but without a KM/QM strategy showed
no significant change in product quality characteristics during
the same research time period. A pretest showed that prior to
KM/QM strategy implementation at company B, no significant
relationship between quality performance and time existed. The
causal assumption that a KM/QM strategy is responsible for
significantly higher quality or the causal assumption that a KM/
QM strategy causes a significant relationship between quality
performance and KM/QM strategy application time is based on
the fact that the companies in this research operate under similar
environmental and cultural conditions. There were no other
changes or policy implementations found that impacted any of
the sites differently during the research period, with exception to
the KM/QM strategy implementation.
Other focus areas of engineering management and
systems engineering, such as project management, innovation
management, new product development, engineering change
management, and system performance could benefit in a similar
fashion as quality management by integrating a knowledge
management strategy that has organizational knowledge creation
at its core. Opportunities for future research lie in determining
the strength of individual factors and factor interactions that
influenced the results of this study. Since this research included
only one company with a KM/QM strategy intervention, another
important prospect lies in studying the effectiveness of a KM/QM
strategy intervention in additional manufacturing companies or
different industry sectors, such as healthcare, service, financial or
Engineering Management Journal Vol. 26 No. 4 December 2014 57
government. Insights on the system life cycle stages of a KM/QM
strategy provides an additional opportunity for future studies
(ISO, 2008)