The Role of the Total-Quality-Management (TQM) Drivers in Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing TQM in Industrialized-Building-System (IBS) Projects in Malaysia: Experts’ Perspectives

Total quality management (TQM) is a systematic management technique for developing a process-driven culture inside an organization to achieve quality and customer and employee satisfaction. TQM has started to impact global business systems, and is extensively regarded as a management “revolution”. The implementation of TQM in the industrialized building system (IBS) in Malaysian projects has not been treated in much detail, although it is essential. This research intended to assess TQM adoption in IBS projects and identify how TQM drivers will help to overcome TQM-implementation challenges. This study utilized the mixed method by developing a semi-structured interview and survey, while the respondents were experts from TQM and IBS consulting firms. The content-validity approach was used, depending on 14 interviews and 28 responses to a distributed questionnaire. The findings indicate that TQM adoption of IBS projects is extremely poor. According to experts, local firms are still unable to execute TQM because they are reluctant to implement the TQM system as a strategy implementation across the construction process. Furthermore, according to the content validity ratio (CVR), there was an agreement that TQM would provide substantial benefits to IBS projects, such as offering cooperative associations, excellent communication, enhanced customer gratification, cost reductions, and productivity improvements. This study provided practical evidence of the fact that if the organizations adopted these 23 drivers of TQM they could overwhelm the challenges of TQM implementation in IBS projects. Thus, the stated factors were trustworthy, as indicated in the transcripts of interviews, and relying on the plurality of expert assessments. This study offers a valuable list of challenges and drivers for managers of the projects as guidelines to help them adopt TQM in IBS projects.