Page 97 - ASBIRES-2017_Preceedings

FACTORS INFLUENCING ON SELF-CHECKING METHOD IN QUALITY CONTROL PROCESS:
STUDY OF APPAREL INDUSTRY IN SRI LANKA
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Quality has become main customer
requirement. So, it plays a vital role in every
industry. Apparel industry has special
procedure of quality inspection because
apparel is considered as items which are
unable to be repaired by any means (Faizur,
Mohan, Rahaman, Baralo, Manna, Nbi &
Chawdury, 2010). When quality issues
increase and more cost incurred with the
quality, self-checking was introduced. So
studies recognize the importance of
abolishing full-time inspectors and assigning
the work of product inspection to be done
part-time by the workers who make the
product (Juran, 1994).
Self-inspection is defined as a state in
which decisions on the product are
delegated to the work force. The delegated
decisions consist mainly whether product
quality conform to the quality goals (Juran
& Godprey, 1999). Researchers and authors
have identified requirements for successful
implementation of quality tools. In
manufacturing industries it is necessary to
maintain better culture, people and
technologies to climb the ladder (pekar,
1995). A study has proven that in Portugal,
employee resist to change due to low level
of employee knowledge, low level of
employee training, difficulty in monitoring
process, lack of communication between
employees, low level of employee
involvement as the barriers to quality
improvement tools (Lopes, Lusebio, Sousa,
& Esteven, 2011). Furthermore some have
identified important quality improvement
initiatives as, management commitment,
education and training, bench marking
under the feedback measurement, total
employee involvement that describe the
need to self-directed teams, rewarding
system, quality improvement teams,
technical factors, statistical methods and
lean production (Islam, Khan, & Khan,
2012). Total Quality management of Pekar
describes the need of Management
commitment, Recognition and Rewarding ,
Measurement or the monitoring and
Evaluation, Training, Empowerment and
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A
strategic planning to move towards the path
of quality (Pekar, 1995). According to the
literature five main factors were identified
for this study as the factors that impact on
the self-checking method.
3 METHODOLOGY
Factors related to the quality tools were
identified from the literature and a
questionnaire was designed to be distributed
among the sample which was selected by
following the random sampling technique.
There were around 500 machine operators in
the plant, Therefore 50% of the population
was selected as the sample. The research
was conducted using structured equation
modeling. Therefore sample size was
decided according to the literature.
Descriptive statistics were used to get a
general idea about the sample and
confirmatory factor analysis used to test the
factor structure and hypothesis testing was
used to identify the impact of each factor.
4 DATA COLLECTION AND
ANALYSIS
Data collection was done using a
structured questionnaire. Questionnaires
were distributed among 350 machine
operators in the firms and the 250 responses
were collected.
According to the descriptive analysis
42% of machine operators represented by
the young labor force of age group between
15-24 years. 29% represented the age group
35-44 years, 17% by age group of 25-34
years and the lowest representation from age
group 45-54 was 12%. In the sewing floor
96% machine operators were female while
4% was male. According to the distribution
of education qualifications 48% was
educated up to ordinary level, 21% has
passed ordinary level, 16% were educated
up to advanced level, 9% have passed
advanced level and 6% were educated up to
grade eight. Furthermore the married
population represented 60% while
unmarried population was 40%.Further
analysis was done using the structural
equational modeling where dependent