Quality management practices and their relationship to buyer's supplier ratings: a study in the Korean automotive industry

This research explores if quality management practices are different among suppliers whose performance is rated high, medium, or low by a common buyin g company and identifies which specific practices contribute to the differe nces. The entire population of first-tier suppliers to a Korean auto assemb ler was surveyed to measure use of quality management practices. Useable re turns were received from 25% of the suppliers surveyed. To measure conforma nce quality and overall rating, suppliers were categorized into high, mediu m, and low performing groups based on the buying company's data. Multivaria te analysis of variance was done using general linear model (GLM-MANOVA) to explore differences in the high-, medium-, and low-performing supplier gro ups based on their use of quality management practices. No statistically si gnificant differences were found when suppliers were categorized based on c onformance quality. However, when categorized based on overall rating, the highest rated suppliers were found to emphasize process management and empl oyee satisfaction to a greater degree than the lowest rated suppliers. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.