Quality management practices in a rice mill located in a cluster: a case study

摘要

A geographically proximate group of rice mills, supporting companies, suppliers, and institutions in an appropriate business environment are emerging as a concept to make rice mills more competitive. The important question is how effectively these rice mills are implementing the various components of total quality management in the absence of a total quality management programme. In this study an attempt is made to investigate the quality management practices in the rice mills operating within a cluster. The location of rice mills in an industrial cluster make us think about those factors which emerges due to cluster initiative, and these factors appear to have potential to contribute in quality management of rice mills. Therefore, we also investigate the role of cluster initiative in quality management so as to fill a research gap left in earlier studies. We found that cluster initiative contributes in quality management of rice mills. The concept of the current study is drawn from two streams of research, i.e., industrial cluster, and quality management literatures.