Conclusions and further work

The critical success factors for the implementation of QS 9000 are management commitment, employees’ involvement, teamwork, training, quality awareness, document and data control, culture change, and advanced quality planning. Moreover, customer satisfaction, continuous
improvement, corrective and preventive actions, and understanding of statistical techniques are also essential. It was found that other commonly used automotive quality systems in other countries are VDA in Germany, EAQF in France and AVSQ in Italy. Recently, a new quality system in 1999 which could be a replacement of QS 9000 in the future because ISO/TS 16949 embraces the key elements of all automotive quality standards such as VDA, EAQF, AVSQ and QS 9000. It is widely accepted by all the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). However,
suppliers need more time to conform to the new automotive quality system ISO/TS 16949. Hence, QS 9000 would be the main quality system widely used in the automotive industry until ISO/TS 16949 is commonly accepted in this industry. Indeed, these standards are also based on 20 elements of ISO 9000: 1994 and composed of many other quality systems or standards.
ISO 9000 is a product focused, system-based and quality detection standard with a short-term objective. It can be argued that QS 9000 falls in between ISO 9000 and TQM, which is concerned more about customer satisfaction, the use of cross-functional teams, application of statistical tools and techniques and addresses more practical advice on how to improve the process performance on a continuous basis in automotive manufacturing industries. QS 9000 may be treated as a stepping stone to implement the TQM philosophy in the case of the automotive industry.