BASED ON THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK BELOW PLEASE CREATE A HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT

The British Standards Institution in BS 4778 defines quality management as that aspect of the overall management function that determines and implements the quality policy. By this generic definition, it is understood to include approaches from the very basic inspection quality to control quality, to assurance quality, ISO 9000 quality, and finally to the latest name in quality management, the TQM approach. There is a large amount of literature on this subject. Many have written on this subject from practicing managers and engineers, consultants, chemists, psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, behaviorists, journalists, quality Gurus themselves, professors in academia and research students in universities and colleges and by commissions appointed by governments. Some attempt to show the link between quality and performance, others provide overviews and reviews, still others merely restate or focus or approach from different angle, and the rest attempt to provide generic guidelines on how to implement quality initiatives. There has been an increase in the number of experts offering off-the-shelf packages on small and large firms [13]. There is also the problem with misconception of the ISO quality system standard, its expectations and what it can offer, and of rising fees for registration and maintenance. This has led some quarters to question its very existence. There are many reports of failures in the implementation of quality programmed and as a result many are concerned in initiating further quality drive.

There is a need to study the relationship between quality practices and performance and to develop a quality management tools and techniques implementation plan to help the industry in its quality drive. No work on the subject of quality management would be complete without including the many and varied definitions of quality from various quarters. Some of these definitions from various quality experts can be found in the literature and these are as shown below:

1. Quality is conformance to requirements - Crosby.
2. Quality is fitness for use - Juran.
3. Quality is a predictable degree of uniformity and dependability, at low cost and suited to the market - Deming.
4. Quality is the (minimum) loss imparted by the product to society from the time the product is shipped - Taguchi.
5. Quality is correcting and preventing loss, not living with loss - Hoshin.
6. Quality is in its essence a way of managing the organization Feigenbaum
7. Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product, service or process, which bear on its ability to sale; feel a given need; from the customers viewpoint - BS 4778.
8. Quality is a dynamic state associated with products, services, people, processes, and environments that meets or exceeds expectations Goetsc