The Impact of TQM and Outsourcing on Quality and Costs for OEMs in the Automotive Industry

Abstract: Background The OEMs are facing fundamental changes. The importance of the quality of products in the automotive industry has changed to being exclusively dependent on the demand and sense of the customer. The OEMs have to react quickly on trends to fulfill the customer demands and be technically innovative. These innovations and intensity of their implication lead to a high cost pressure for the OEMs again. Therefore, the OEMs need to work together with their suppliers. Production strategies like TQM or outsourcing are known as the key to success. Although cost and quality management themselves are quite well-investigated in literature, and the use of both TQM and outsourcing are widely implemented in the OEMs’ strategies to improve quality and reduce costs, studies about the combination of TQM and outsourcing and their impact on quality and costs cannot be found. The wide spread opinion of managers is that quality and costs cannot support each other. Purpose In our Master Thesis we wanted to find out how quality and costs are related to each other to fulfill the given goals. The purpose was to examine the impact of the two common methods, TQM and outsourcing, on costs and quality for the OEMs. We explored how the concepts interact and support costs and quality. Furthermore, the analysis states how these approaches are related within a supply chain and how automobile manufacturers can use both approaches to assure low costs and high quality at the same time. Method Our Master Thesis is a theoretical study based on a qualitative research method. We used scientific articles and literature for the theory and combined these in the analysis with the data and results from previous case studies as the empiric value. We combined this through the deductive approach. We not only used a positivistic view, but we also used a hermeneutic view due to the fact that analysis and conclusion incorporate both scientific articles and also personal interpretations. Results and Conclusion We concluded that precisely these two methods, outsourcing and TQM, supplement each other and fit together very well to assure the efficiency of the automobile OEMs with high quality and low costs at the same time. This is due to the fact that outsourcing is often used in companies and reduces the costs of OEMs; and TQM alone leads to quality improvements. Not only do they work well separately in companies, but outsourcing lays ideal foundations for an efficient TQM implementation. Suggestions on Continued Research We could not find any studies where these two approaches were researched in combination. Thus, one good future research could be to go on with empirical analyses about this theme in the automotive industry, for example by conducting surveys or interviews with OEMs. A case study about the combination of TQM and outsourcing could verify our mostly from the theory concluded results of the interrelation. A further deviation on the research could be that suppliers, instead of OEMs, could be the focus of the study.