Author/Authors :
Abdullah, Nasuha Lee Universiti Sains Malaysia - School of Computer Sciences, Malaysia , Jamaludin, Khairur Rijal Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, International Campus - UTM Razak School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Malaysia , Abdul Talib, Hayati Habibah Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, International Campus - UTM Razak School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Malaysia
Abstract :
The majority of Malaysian electronics manufacturing companies are electronics contract manufacturers (CM) and the industry is known as electronics manufacturing services (EMS). The industry is lucrative yet challenging. Companies in this industry need to have strong and flexible production system as well as supply chain to cater for diverse customer requirements such as high mix low volume demand. The objective of this paper is to identify the challenges in managing quality effectively and efficiently in a contract-manufacturing environment. Observation and semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand and identify the operational problems in a local EMS company. The problems are then analyzed and generalized against existing quality theories. Interestingly, the findings showed that all the problems have been addressed in the quality theories some 30 years ago.
Keywords :
Electronics manufacturing services , quality management , challenges , TQM , quality gurus
