Quality management practices: an international perspective

The contribution of this paper to the existing body of knowledge on quality management practices is unique and unprecedented; for it classifies quality management practices into traditional versus contemporary practices. The paper compares and contrasts quality management practices in three developed and one developing economy. Our analyses indicate that Saudi manufacturing plants are taking a big stride towards achieving world‐class manufacturing status. It shows that there are statistically significant differences among the Saudi manufacturing plants in the extent to which some of the quality management practices have been implemented. It also shows that significant differences were found in one of the variables measuring product quality variables among manufacturing plants in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. In addition, no doubt that our findings will raise the awareness of top management in the Saudi manufacturing sector to the importance of competing globally on the basis of quality and manufacturing efficiency. Secondly, Saudi companies participated in the study can use our findings to benchmark their time‐based performance against that of the world‐class companies in the three North American countries.