eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Objectives of the Study

The objective of this study is to research what are the factors that enhance the quality of the product and the process of the cooperation with suppliers. The goal of the thesis is to propose a quality management framework for cooperation with suppliers for the case company's quality department. The case company is working in the IT and security sector, so there is a high demand for reliable products and fulfillment of strict international and national regulations.

Academic background and methodology

Global competition has increased and companies are concentrating more on their core business area only. This has led to the increase of global outsourcing. Quality plays an important role for companies, both for the product and for the customer satisfaction point of view. However, with the era of outsourcing, earlier used quality assurance tasks are not sufficient.

A branch called supply chain quality management (SCQM) has developed with different management-driven strategies to improve the overall quality performance of an organization through the effective management of quality on supply side. Previous relevant SCQM studies for this thesis have researched mainly how different cooperation attributes affect to the product's conformance quality and customer satisfaction.

Findings and conclusions

The created Quality Management Framework for cooperation with suppliers is one tool for the case company to do effective subcontracting, to minimize the risks of poor quality and to manage the SCQM better. The created Framework consists of two layers. The first layer divides the suppliers into four categories based on the type of outputs they are offering to the company (manufacturing vs. design) and based on the complexity and/or newness of the product. The second layer defines more in detail the main themes and methods to work in each category. For the theoretical contribution, this model provides a new specific quality framework for integrated IT systems.