Challenge
Many manufacturing businesses struggle to improve their operations, provide quality products, and develop skills required to grow the company. These challenges demand specific strategic solutions. Our client, Eddels Shoes required a solution to quickly identify and mitigate quality challenges and capacitate their teams to take ownership of the quality management process.
Our Solution
A Total Quality Management (TQM) system was implemented. This process was design to improve customer satisfaction, by shifting all team members focus to that of ensuring quality and value is given to the customer (both internal and external customers) and challenging team members to consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. The KZN Clothing and Textiles Cluster, facilitated by B&M Analysts, supported Eddels by supporting the company to implement four key objectives:
Improving the effectiveness of internal processes
Aligning the entire organisation around one common goal (quality and value addition to the customer, and
Building organisational skills and capabilities in TQM.
Case Study
Eddels Shoes is a well-established footwear manufacturer based in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and a member of the KZN CTC. Eddels Shoes administered in the Competitiveness Improvement Programme (CIP). The CIP is an intensive programme of support designed to upgrade the product, process, and people capabilities of participating firms.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a process upgrading method that focuses on continually detecting and eliminating errors in manufacturing, streamlining supply chain management, improving the customer experience, and ensuring your employees are well-trained. The KZN CTC scoped the project, successfully identified the correct people to make improvements and report on these improvements.
From these programmes and interventions, the KZN CTC effectively, implemented processes to build quality management into Eddels Shoes operations, which dramatically improved their manufacturing procedures and final product.
Eddels Shoes saw an impressive 35.08% rework rate reduction, a 16.41% reject rate reduction, a 44.42% decrease in dissatisfied customer return rate and improved employee morale after implementing Total Quality Management (TQM).
