CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS
4.2 Research analysis
4.2.5 Customer Involvement
changed in early stage of the processes when those changes will not interfere with manufacturing processes which is consistent with research from Burgess (1999)
4.2.4.5 Preventive Maintenance: Another important aspect in process management is preventive maintenance, this aspect can help to company to ensure that equipment is always in good condition. Equipment breakdown has effect to product quality because it causes production delay especially in CNC process which it is the beginning of the whole process. Then the staffs have to rush producing the products so that they can be delivered on time. As a result, defects occurs more often because the staffs cannot focus on quality due to insufficient timeframe. Another drawback of equipment breakdown is that the company has to proceed with the production outsourced, this incident costs the company a lot of capital because normally outsourcing is expensive in this industry, and usually outsource provides the component that does not meet specifications in which the company cannot afford this incident to happen.
After asking all respondents about how to resolve equipment breakdown problem, they agree that the company should develop maintenance schedule; for example, according to Mr. Anon, CNC specialist, he said that all equipment should be checked daily before start working, and the top management should provide check sheet for daily equipment check. Besides, thorough maintenance should be provided at least twice a year by manufacturers of the equipment to make sure that all equipment are in good condition. According to Table 4.1, all respondents agree that preventive maintenance is an important factor for quality improvement which supported by a research from Ahmed, Hassan, and Taha (2004) in which stated that preventive maintenance is an integral part of TQM since machine breakdown can cause both defects and delayed delivery. According to this research, the most common methods to improve preventive maintenance are check sheet and process flow diagram to evaluate equipment condition where the machine is applied (Ahmed, Hassan and Taha, 2004).
realize how important customer involvement is, because all designs and specifications are sent to top management first, and the company and customers have to agree upon every product design and specification. In management perspective, customers concern most about product quality, and they will not accept the product that does not meet with requirement. However, production staffs think that customers do not express any concerns about quality because they are not persons who solve problems with customers.
Even though customers involve with product designs and specifications, customers are not a part of manufacturing processes since the company try to limit customer involvement to be only informants. If the customers know too much about manufacturing processes, they tend to modify the processes and designs which altered from the agreement. Of course, the company has to face with customer interference from time to time especially during producing sample products, and this incident made top management team frustrated because all samples could not be longer use which means that the company lost capital of producing samples as well as opportunity costs to produce other products; however, production staffs did not realize that so they did not feel frustrated. Customer interference can have an impact on product quality because changing in designs and specifications shortens production timeframe if customers do not give delivery extension, and then production staffs have to rush the production which will reduce concentration on quality.
Referring to Dadfar et al. (2013), customer involvement can have negative impact if customer involvement interfere with working processes, and this kind of interference can demoralize employees because they will feel frustrated if customer changes specifications or designs too often. This research supports the result regarding to customer involvement in this study since the result show that although customer involvement is important for quality improvement, but if customers involve too much, it can affect employees’ morale and reduce product quality. Answers from top management team are consistent with Dadfar et al. (2013) since each respondent agreed that customer involvement should be limited to prevent interference from customers which can cause frustration to production staffs; however, production staffs did not think that customer involvement is a factor quality improvement because they did not realize
the effects from customer involvement. Therefore, answers from production staffs did not agree with Dadfar et al. (2013).
However, the company tries to limit the role of customers to be beneficial for both sides, so customer’s role for the company is limited to be innovator and productive resource, according to Dadfar and Brege, and Semnani, innovator is a customer who provide new products from customer’s ideas and competencies, and productive resource is the customer who can provide quality, satisfaction, and value details to the company (Dadfar and Brege, and Semnani, 2013). As an OEM company, customers have responsibilities to provide new product designs and specifications for manufacturing, and also provide satisfaction and quality details to ensure that the products meet with the requirements. As a result, customer involvement can improve product quality only when the involvement does not interfere with manufacturing processes.