ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND ITS PRACTICE IN PLASTIC INDUSTRIES: THE CASE OF ADDIS ABABA

The purpose of this study was to assess the quality management systems practice and gaps in ISO QMS certified plastic firms located in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. To this end, a descriptive survey design was employed. The total population of the study was ten plastic product manufacturing firms which certified by ISO 9001 QMS and from these four factories were selected randomly to give equal opportunity and for the those plastic product manufacturing firms, 92 questioner were distributed to key person who had information about ISO 9001 implementation in their respective firms using purposive random sampling by departments and convenient sample that represented the population but out of 92 questionnaire 78 was returned. The data was gathered via means of questionnaire and interview. Data obtained through questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical data analysis tools and data obtained through personal interview was interpreted descriptively. Crouch alpha was used to determine scale validity and reliability and the collected data was analyzed using SPSS. The study identify key gaps during implementation of QMS with their respected firms like, lack of corrective action and preventive action, less involvement of people and lack of continual improvement, lack of promotion and incentives, lack of training in using of QMS as improvement tools are the major gaps that found needs to improve to boost the overall performance and for continual improvement of the firms