Total Quality Management in Indian Manufacturing SMEs

In operation literature, the effect of total quality management on firm performance has been investigated in many studies. Compared to large manufacturing firms, most small and medium sized firms are slow and often reluctant to adopt quality management practices. This paper aims to examine the relationship between quality management dimensions and firm performance, considering manufacturing SMEs as focal point of research. Furthermore, the intention is to identify the major barriers to adoption of quality management practices in manufacturing SMEs. Empirical data were drawn from a sample of 127 manufacturing SMEs in India to address the research objective. The test of the structural model supports the proposed hypotheses, that total quality management is positively related to manufacturing performance.