Developing an Appropriate Performance Measurement Framework for Total Quality Management (TQM) in Construction and Other Industries

Abstract

Total quality management (TQM) is a set of opinions and ideas that widely called “management philosophy”. This management technique is able to assist the construction firms in improving continuously the organization's performance, in order to satisfy customers and  survive in the market. The success of TQM implementation is tightly dependent on identifying and selecting the appropriate critical success factors (CSFs), quality tools, and performance measures (KPIs) within TQM framework.  Doubtlessly, a set of suitable performance measures (indicators) has a significant role to verify and ensure that TQM implementation can successfully achieve its aims in the organization. Thus, the main purpose of this paper was to develop a suitable framework to assess the effects of TQM  implementation on organization's performance in construction industry. For this aim, the study was conducted a comprehensive literature review to specify the existing key performance indicators (KPIs) from 26 TQM frameworks that formulated by scholars. In data analysis, the only 20 KPIs were found of 26 TQM studies. The extracted KPIs (20) classified based on four dimensions of balanced scorecard (BSC), and then arranged from highest to lowest frequency for each perspective of BSC. Finally, a total of ten KPIs were determined and presented within BSC system as an appropriate performance measures framework, which enables evaluating critical areas that very vital to the success of TQM implementation in construction firms at project and enterprise levels.