Total quality management success factors and their relationships with performance measures in the food industry: a Mauritian case study

This study was undertaken to identify factors needed for a successful implementation of a total quality management (TQM) programme in Mauritian food manufacturing companies (MFMC) and to evaluate their impact on operational performance (OP), quality performance (QP) and business performance (BP). Carrying out reliability test and validity tests like exploratory factor analysis with the data collected, valid and reliable constructs were determined. Using these constructs, a proposed model that consisted of the three performance measures; OP, QP and BP, and the identified success factors aggregated as TQM index was tested using structural equation modelling. Results showed that the constructs were valid and reliable, and all the bivariate combinations in the proposed model were significant (p < 0.05) and positive except between TQM index and BP, and between QP and BP (p > 0.05). Removing these two pathways made the model fit. Hence, TQM index did not have a direct and significant effect on BP in this study.