Enhancing Basic Metal Industry Global Competitiveness Through Total Quality Management, Supply Chain Management & Just- In -Time

The selection and implantation of sufficient and appropriate continuous improvement strategy are the key success factors for improving firm performance and enhancement of competitive advantage on manufacturing industries. As a result special role are given to Continuous improvement programs such as Supply Chain Management (SCM), Six-Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, Just-in-Time (JIT) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) in a production system, which attain sustainable business environment and competitive advantage. Thus, the aim of the study is to study the challenges and trends of global competitiveness of basic metal industries, investigates the way of integrating continuous improvement tools and then developed an integrated continuous improvement model from TQM, JIT, and SCM to improve the global competitiveness of steel and metal industries. From numerous contentious improvement programs, we have to emphasize integrated SCM, JIT and TQM implementation on basic metal industries to improve competitive performance. Mainly the study was conducted through field observation, questioner, company reports used as primary data and literature review of research articles, books, manuals, magazines, and electronic-sources, which used as secondary data. The survey data is analyzed using descriptive analysis, SPCT (fishbone diagram).The result found that poor supply chain system, workforce, raw material uncertainty, energy fluctuation, outdated technology, manufacturing systems, financial and logistics problems were identified as the obstacles and influence the Ethiopian basic metal industry performance and global competitiveness. Thus, to tackle the problems an integrated continuous improving model was developed to improve the performance and global competitiveness of basic metal industries.

Keywords:

Basic Metal Industry , Integrated Continuous improvement Model , JIT , SCM&TQM , Global Competitiveness , Ethiopia