Quality management effectiveness in Malaysia: A conceptual model for electronics manufacturing services industry

Outsourcing has evolved from getting external parties to perform non-core activities to getting them to do everything from design to ship, in turn creating the birth and tremendous growth of the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry or the contract manufacturing (CM) industry. However, the recent spate of recalls due to CM poor quality control have triggered the calls to include quality risks as one of the main factors in outsourcing decisions. This paper proposes a conceptual model to implement effective QM practices in the setting of CM industry in Malaysia. Operational complexity (OC) has been identified as the contextual factor in the QM practices-performance model. It is based on contingency theory that implementation of effective QM practices are contextual to organization and not universal.